Terra Caligarum
by anacsadder
Summary: "Perhaps it would be easier for you to think of the test as a game. A game where the object is to learn the rules." Main Characters: Mokuba, Seto, Yugi
1. A Desire for Change

**A/N: This was influenced by Silent Hill. It's not a direct crossover, exactly, but the idea was undeniably in the back of my mind when I created Terra Caligarum, so I have to say it. You know, as part of my disclaimer. See, I don't own the rights to Silent Hill or Yu-Gi-Oh, and I'm not making any money from these writings.**

Three pairs of blue eyes stared down the raven-haired boy on the dueling platform. Silver teeth glimmered so realistically, it was easy to forget they were holograms. Mokuba's eyes slid down the length of the snarling, white dragons and landed on his side of the field. His lone monster hunkered in defense position. It was no match for the trio towering over it, snarling after the last few scraps of life points. His eyes continued to the cards in his hands. His brand new card peeped at him from between Monster Reborn and Lesser Fiend. Mokuba had been dying to test out that new card. Seto's deck had been programmed into his private dueling computer. On a last-minute whim, Mokuba had decided to see how the card measured up against his brother's deck, just for fun. Less than ten turns later, and with only one monster to sacrifice, it seemed his ambition would get him knocked out of the duel before he had a chance to play it. What would Seto do in a position like this? Perhaps he had a chance if he could find a way to send the monster to his graveyard… Mokuba held his breath and reached for his deck.

Success!

"I'll activate Graceful Charity," he said. Of course the computer didn't care if he announced his moves or not, but it was gaming etiquette when dueling a real opponent. After all that the younger Kaiba had witnessed, he'd decided that it might be fun to do more than officiate or cheer from the sidelines. "So I'll draw three cards and discard two."

Mokuba kept his dueling a secret. After each match, he erased the records from the computer. Maybe one day, when he was ready, he'd challenge his brother for real. He had no fantasies about beating the older Kaiba, but Mokuba was sure that if he practiced hard enough he'd be able to put up one hell of a fight. Then perhaps his brother would look at him with pride. Mokuba knew his brother loved him regardless, but he had never been a prodigy like Seto. He'd never been tough, driven, and determined like Seto. It would be nice to be more than average at something.

"Next, I'll use Monster Reborn to retrieve a card from my graveyard." This was it. He couldn't wait to see what the card looked like. Sometimes Mokuba enjoyed sneaking in just to look at the holograms. "I choose Goddess Tesseract."

The card turned up about three days ago in a pawn shop downtown. Mokuba had never heard of it before. A woman with spiky black hair and silver tribal tattoos crawling over every inch of her dark-gray skin smirked at him from the glossy cardboard. Violet-red eyes tugged at his soul. When he picked it up, it tingled in his finger tips. Was this what Seto felt for his dragons? Yugi for his magician? The young boy could not resist. All three days he'd thought of that card, nestled safely in his deck, begging him to put her on the field.

Now, as he placed her on the field, she came to life. Black, feathery wings arched regally out of her back and her leathery tail lashed. She started with zero attack and defense points, but her power didn't come from her face value. "That means we flip a coin for each monster on the field," Mokuba said. "The ones that get tails are sent to their graveyard."

The effect wound up taking down Mokuba's defense monster along with one of the dragons, but that was okay, because of the card's second effect.

"Next," the boy said, "she gets five hundred attack points for each monster in my graveyard, and five hundred defense points for each monster in my opponent's graveyard." Granted, his 'opponent' didn't have very many monsters in the graveyard at all, but Mokuba had seven. Just enough to blow one of the dragons off the field. "Goddess Tesseract, attack Blue Eyes White Dragon!"

Now for the really cool part. What would the hologram attack look like? The goddess spread her wings and arms out to either side and floated into the air. Her legs, feet, and tail pointed straight down at the floor. Her eyes glowed like two bright rubies. Lines of light raced along the edges of the tribal markings until they all glowed. Then there was a flash and the room plunged into darkness. Mokuba's scream faded into some unseen distance.


	2. A Subconscious Need to Grow

**A/N: I don't typically update this quickly, but I'm itching to get through the set up and to the plot as fast as possible.**

Yugi's hand moved in mechanical circles, rubbing Windex into the glass display case with a rag. Two weeks had passed, and his neck still felt unnaturally light. The shape of the millennium puzzle made for an awkward pendant. The weight of the gold had tugged hard on his neck and dug the sharp line along the back of the square side into his solar plexus. It had swayed, twisted, and bounced when he walked, poking him alternately with two of the top corners. He missed it more than anything.

No, that wasn't true. He missed Atem more than anything. The sudden emptiness in his head, in his soul, was far more jarring than losing the comforting weight of the puzzle. Sure, he'd proven he could duel without the Pharaoh, but he'd also realized something in the last two weeks. He'd come to depend on Atem for confidence and strength in many areas of his life. Joey and Tristan protected him from bullies, and Tea was a great listener, but… Yugi felt so _hollow_. So alone in his own head. One couldn't go from having two souls in a single body to being all alone and move on as though nothing had happened.

The bell above the door jingled as two teenage boys entered the store. "I knew we'd find him here," the blond drawled in his Brooklyn accent.

"What're you doing here, Yug? It's Saturday," the brunette added.

The short boy smiled up at his friends. He'd been desperate to keep himself busy. If his hands were busy, his mind couldn't wander. If his mind didn't wander, he didn't have to face the cavernous quiet where the Pharaoh once resided. He swallowed and chose his next words carefully. "I have so much time on my hands now, I thought I should help grandpa out a bit. Like I used to before."

Joey and Tristan's grins faltered as their minds turned to their lost friend. They missed him too, but neither could imagine how it must feel for Yugi. "Well, uh," Joey said. "We were about to meet Tea at the mall. We thought it might do you some good to, you know, get out too. You been spending a lot of your spare time here."

Tea. Yugi's heart fluttered a little. Kind, beautiful, strong Tea. He knew she liked the Pharaoh. Him moving on meant Yugi might have a chance with Tea now. However, without his other half's confidence, Yugi wasn't sure if he'd be able to tell her how he felt. It was sadly ironic. If she even wanted him now that he'd reverted from exotic Egyptian king to plain old Yugi… Regardless, the girl's sparkling eyes and easy laugh temporarily filled the hole in his heart. Before Yugi could go ask his grandpa's permission to leave, the bell rattled again. The trio turned to look, and all three had to blink to ensure their eyes weren't deceiving them.

"What do _you_ want?" Joey's tone was faintly accusatory.

Yugi shook off his shock and smiled nervously. "Hey, Kaiba." He straightened from his crouched position in front of the display case. Fate had thrown them together over and over, but with all of that passed Yugi hadn't expected to see the CEO of Kaiba Corp again, certainly not this soon, and especially not at the modest Kame Game shop. "Can I help you?"

Seto towered stiffly over all three of them. Icy blue eyes narrowed as they regarded the snarling mutt. The group's little attack dog. Seto's desperation had forced his pride into submission long enough for him to seek audience with Yugi, but he'd be damned if he discussed this business in front of Wheeler. He could barely admit to himself that there might possibly be forces beyond his understanding at work in the world. With all the bizarre things that happened to the spiky-haired runt, Seto thought Yugi could offer some insight on his current predicament. None of the other dorks had any business nosing into his private affairs.

"Spit it out, rich boy, we ain't got all day," Joey said.

"As short as I'm sure the exchange would be, I don't have time to engage you in a battle of wits, or whatever passes for wit in that big, empty head of yours. Now, if you two would vacate the premises, I came to speak with Yugi in private."

Joey growled. "Yeah, well, this is a public place. You got no right to throw us out. So what now?"

Yugi's purple eyes scanned Kaiba's expression. The mask of indifference covered it well, but his face looked too stiff. Tiny red lines in the whites of his eyes spoke of sleeplessness, and rigid posture spoke of intense strain. "We'd have more privacy in my room," Yugi suggested softly. He didn't expect Kaiba to accept, but when he nodded and followed Yugi upstairs, without any kind of cutting remark, Yugi imagined the situation must be more serious than he previously thought.

For their part, Tristan and Joey watched dumbstruck as the tail end of Kaiba's navy-blue trench coat disappeared through the back door, but didn't try to follow.

)0(

They made it upstairs without running into Grandpa Muto, and Yugi shut the door.

"I only came here as a last resort," Seto said without taking his scowl off of Yugi. "I want you to know that."

"Okay," Yugi said, and waited for him to continue. Dealing with Kaiba's ego took patience and a thick skin, but Yugi had grown accustomed to it.

Seto groaned and stared at his shoes. "Mokuba has been missing for nearly a week." His voice came out dead and tired. He was terribly worried. The worry tore him up from the inside out, but he didn't want Yugi to see it. That display of weakness was a surrender he would not allow.

Yugi's purple eyes widened farther than usual. "What happened?" Yugi already knew how much Kaiba's little brother meant to him. Kaiba had put his life on the line for a _chance_ to save Mokuba at Duelist Kingdom. If Kaiba's presence here today didn't say enough, that moment spoke volumes.

"I don't know," Seto said. "The mansion security tapes showed him entering the dueling arena, but he never came out. The computer data and the footage from inside the dueling arena were scrambled by some kind of- some kind of software glitch." He had to force that past a lump in his throat. A tiny doubt nagged him. "We searched the whole arena top to bottom. I called the police, hired an investigator, had my staff analyze the glitch and try to repair the footage, but none of them could find anything."

"A week isn't _that_ long. I'm sure someone'll find something." Yugi tried to sound encouraging. "Is there something I could do?"

Seto turned his back to Yugi and slipped a long-fingered hand into his pocket. "I can't believe I'm doing this," he muttered. Perhaps sleep deprivation and desperation threatened his sanity, but for Mokuba he needed to try all of the angles. The incident with the dragon cards had gotten him thinking, and Yugi wouldn't dismiss or laugh at the idea of a... special card. He wouldn't go blabbing about this conversation with anyone else, either. Pinching the card between his pointer and middle fingers, Seto held it out behind him. "I found this card on his field. It's not in our database. Since you're such a magnet for weird cards, I thought I'd ask if you heard of it."

"Goddess Tesseract?" Yugi studied the red-eyed woman and she studied him in return. The scarlet popped in contrast with the blacks and grays that comprised the rest of the color scheme. "It doesn't look familiar."

Seto glared at him. "I came all the way over here and that's all you have to say?"

"I'm sorry, Kaiba," Yugi stammered sincerely. "I wish I could help." Atem. Yugi bet the Pharaoh would've had some ideas, but he wasn't here. There was silence. Yugi didn't like silence. "You think the card caused the glitch?"

"The thought had crossed my mind," Seto said. "However, there weren't any viruses in the system."

Yugi scratched the nape of his neck, where the puzzle's chain once sat. Kaiba seemed so distressed, and Yugi wanted to help so badly, but he couldn't think of anything. His eyes fell on the top shelf of his closet. "What if we put it on my duel disk?"

The taller boy's eyebrows knitted together and he regarded Yugi as though he'd grown a second head. "What difference would that make?"

"Well, maybe if we saw what it did, then… I mean, if it…" Yugi trailed off sheepishly. He couldn't say for sure why that seemed like the right step to take. It just did.

The suggestion sounded idiotic, and Kaiba almost said as much. However, Yugi dragged his desk chair to his closet and climbed up to retrieve a box from a high shelf. "Are you seriously going to waste my time with this?"

Yugi opened the box, slipped the duel disk on his arm, and started it. "I have a hunch," he said, frowning. "Besides, you asked for my ideas. It would be more of a waste if we didn't try anything at all." He placed the card on the device's field. Nothing happened.

"I never should've come here," Seto grumbled, reaching for the card. "You really _did_ leave your better half in Egypt."

In the next moment, everything happened at once. Stung by Kaiba's words, Yugi took a backwards step. Kaiba's hand closed on thin air as the card and the duel disk it sat on followed Yugi's retreat. The translucent image of some kind of dark angel appeared near the ceiling, posed as though crucified. A bright flash preceded the plunge into complete darkness.


	3. The Limbo Before the Descent

Yugi and Seto made eye contact. The duel disk was gone. The room was gone. Blackness still surrounded them on all sides. Yugi's eyes were violet pools of fear. Seto never broke his sardonic defense, but confusion and discomfort simmered below the surface. "Oh, great," he said, flatly. "What now?"

"Where are we?" Yugi breathed. It couldn't possibly be the shadow realm. That was over. They'd destroyed Leviathan, so that was out, too.

"You are in the limbo before the descent," a female voice echoed around them. "Your tests will begin shortly."

"What descent? What test? Who are you?" The questions poured from Yugi's lips.

"Perhaps it would be easier for you to think of the test as a game. A game where the object is to learn the rules." The air shimmered and the creature from the card appeared. Her fingers and toes tapered into long, sharp, points. She was nude, covered only by the swirled, silver patterns, but she lacked any feminine details. "As for my identity, I am simply the overseer of Terra Caligarum. Some call me goddess, and some call me devil. Make of me what you wish."

Seto had remained quiet, but his mind raced, attempting to process the new environment. He couldn't believe it was real, or at least didn't want to believe it was real. Maybe the flash hypnotized him and Yugi somehow. Were they still in Yugi's room? He tried to move, but found himself paralyzed from the neck down. "Is this what happened to Mokuba?"

"Your brother?" Goddess Tesseract asked. "He is sixty-three hours, forty-nine minutes, and thirty-two seconds into his game."

"Tell me where he is," Seto demanded.

"Telling you his location would be a violation of his rule set."

"I want to see him. Now!" Seto's eyes flashed.

The deity was unimpressed. "All three of you are here for a common purpose. When the time is right, your paths will cross, but no sooner. Once you complete your respective tasks, I will return all of you to your world."

"What happens if we lose?" Yugi asked.

"The only way to lose is to die while playing. If that happens, you will become one of the permanent residents and suffer what you failed to overcome." She faded and her voice trailed off with her. "Now, it is almost time for you to begin, so be ready…"

"Wait!" Yugi called. "What kind of-" A scream cut his question short, as the invisible bonds allow him to fall.

)0(

At first, he couldn't see anything. Only the queasiness in his stomach told him he was falling. After a while, gray light filtered through the dark clouds below him. It grew brighter. Trees materialized and rushed up to intercept him. Yugi squeezed his eyes shut, bracing for the slapping, scratching pain that would bounce him through the branches and plop him on the earth. It never came.

He opened his eyes, flat on his stomach in the dirt. Getting his knees under him, he glanced around. The path carved through a foggy forest. Rays of twilight speared through the occasional gap overhead. Yugi glanced behind him and found an impossibly high cliff, far too smooth to climb. "Kaiba?" His shaky voice barely dented the stagnant air. "Kaiba?" He tried louder. "Kaiba!" No answer. He was alone.

But what about the permanent residents the goddess had mentioned? Subconsciously placing a hand where the puzzle once rested, he pushed himself to his feet. A game he could only lose by dying. So should he treat it like some kind of adventure game? The dense forest and dead end behind him limited his options. Yugi moved to follow the path. The Kaiba brothers had to be somewhere around this place.

)0(

Seto sat up to find himself surrounded by headstones. Mist crept and curled between them. He stood and brushed himself off, taking in the cemetery suspiciously. If this was supposed to be a game, he wasn't sure what kind of game. It could be a virtual reality program. Then the only questions that remained were how he got here and how he could get out. The creature told him that he'd win the game when he learned the rules, but that left him with too many options.

They—whoever they were—had separated him from Yugi. Probably part of the game. Yugi was smart enough to figure out his end of things, though. Locating Mokuba was Seto's first priority. Twenty-four hours inside a virtual world could be dangerous enough, but sixty-three? If Mokuba had a single scratch on him, there would be hell to pay.

Nothing told him which way to go, but he had to start somewhere, so he walked the direction the graves were facing. Admittedly, the technology involved impressed him. He felt the cold, wet air on his face and hands. He smelled the damp earth and dead leaves. Which of his enemies could create something so realistic? He'd eliminated Gozaburo and Noah. Von Shroeder was a hack. Maybe Pegasus had a new axe to grind.

Seto paused underneath a granite arch. Beyond the iron fence surrounding this piece, the cemetery dropped into a double layered pit. Both levels contained more graves and twisted trees. Mausoleums brooded on the horizon. Everything after that was a hazy, gray mystery. Whoever created this program had certainly given it an apt name. Land of Mists, if he wasn't mistaken, and Seto Kaiba was very rarely mistaken. He set his jaw and pressed on.


	4. Taking Control

The small form huddled between a couch and a coffee table in the abandoned house. Black hair spilled over skinned knees and ripped jeans. One scab-encrusted arm wrapped around bruised shins, and the other hand clung to a locket shaped like a Duel Monsters card. Heavy curtains sealed the room off from the rest of the world. Mokuba had no idea how long he'd been hiding in this house, much less how long he'd been in this town. There was no nighttime or daytime. All of the clocks he'd seen were stopped. The light outside remained a consistent, chilling gray, like right before a rain storm.

When Mokuba first arrived in the ghost town, he had roamed the foggy streets until his legs felt about to fall off. He'd screamed until his throat hurt. The panic of being so completely and utterly alone had driven him to his knees in a bundle of soft sobs. He'd only looked up when he heard that terrible sound. The sound that had taught him he wasn't so alone here as he'd thought. Metal clinking and dragging on cement.

They were faceless monsters with blades where their hands and feet should've been. They'd chased him—impossibly fast on their bladed limbs. He'd been running from them for… ever. He'd escaped momentarily, but another one always waited around the corner. The boy would've preferred loneliness to the company he found.

Hunger and exhaustion had set in, but fear kept him moving. When he could barely move another inch, he'd passed out in a parked car, only to wake with three of them banging on the outside. Mokuba had barely escaped that encounter by hitting a creature with the door and fleeing for his life. Not, however, before it grabbed for him and left a slice running from his shoulder to his elbow.

At first he'd been too frightened to attempt sleep again, but he'd learned he could avoid attack by resting inside. Those wicked claws couldn't handle doorknobs. They couldn't hear or see too well, either, so when he stayed quiet he could tiptoe past them. Not that he had anywhere to go. What was the point? There was no one here. Seto wasn't here. Mokuba's lip trembled and another tear joined the countless other drops that had paraded the span of his cheeks in the last… However long it had been.

His big brother could've kept the monsters at bay. His big brother would've found a way out of here by now. Cut off from him, their body guards, Tea, Yugi… Mokuba didn't know what to do with his self. At the same time, as his growling stomach reminded him, the alternative to facing the monsters wasn't much better. It boiled down to a choice between giving up and dying of starvation or searching for a way home and possibly getting ripped to shreds in the process. Starvation would be inevitable if he stayed here. The monsters were somewhat avoidable. _And_, Mokuba thought, _what would Seto do? What would he want me to do? Giving up isn't option._

The boy uncurled and skimmed the room for a possible weapon. A floor lamp leaned in a corner. The length looked good and the weight on the end might help add some extra power to his swing, but he didn't want to haul it around with him. There were knives in the kitchen, but they paled in comparison to the blades on those monsters. The way the beasts lunged toward him reaching and slashing in blind desperation… They emitted guttural, strangled grunts when they attacked, despite their lack of mouths. They stank of mold and mildew, too. The thought of getting close enough to stab one caused a shudder.

Mokuba sucked in a sharp breath and let it out. Forcing himself to stop thinking and start moving, he stalked to the rear of the house and opened the door at the end of the hall. Previous exploration had revealed it to be a young boy's room, littered with old, dirty toys. The bed was flipped against the wall. The closet door hung from its hinges. One thing stood out among the debris and decay, however. A shining, aluminum bat. Mokuba clutched it with both hands and raised it in front of him like a sword. Then he took a few practice swings, trying to envision a foe standing in front of him. They were too tall to swing directly at their heads. Maybe he could knock them over first, with a shot to the legs or the stomach. If they even had the same weak spots as humans… They were humanoid… Resting the bat on his shoulder, he exited the room.

Before opening the front door, he checked the front lawn through a crack in the curtain. There were two monsters outside, one in the yard and the other in the street. The nearest one's head twitched toward the window and Mokuba retreated into the shadows of the living room. His heart battered his rib cage. Videogames always made this stuff seem so simple. Press a button, shoot an enemy. Pull a stick, dodge an attack. _What if I drop the bat?_ He thought. _What if I can't hit hard enough?_ The creatures appeared emaciated, but they ran with more speed and endurance than their appearance suggested.

In the end, no matter how many laps these thoughts ran through his head, he had to try. He had to accept the fact that he might be stuck here for a very long time and no one would be here to hold his hand. "I am a Kaiba," he whispered to himself. "Kaibas don't back down from a challenge. I can do this. I can _do _this."

Indigo eyes narrowed resolutely as he raised the bat in his right hand and inched the front door open with his left. Despite his fears earlier, the monster on the lawn hadn't spotted him in the window. Of course it hadn't, it was blind. Even now, shambling in lazy circles about five feet away, it didn't lift a single blade toward him. The boy's evident invisibility didn't comfort him much. Mokuba gripped the bat with both hands once more and edged closer to the porch railing. The raised platform left him a better shot at the creature's skull. It drifted closer. Its rot-colored skin shimmered wetly. With a grimace, Mokuba raised the bat and brought it down on the slimy, bald head as hard as he could.

CRACK!

The bat shivered in his hands on impact, but he maintained a white-knuckled grip. His quarry's knees buckled and it caught itself on a hand-spike. It flailed with the other blades, but the fence around the porch kept the strikes from finding a proper target. Mokuba raised his weapon for another blow.

CRACK!

Mokuba froze with the bat still raised and glanced at his feet.

CRUNCH!

The rotten wood gave way and the deck swallowed him from the waist down. For an instant his heart stopped. Not only was the creature thrashing along the front of the house in a direction that would soon allow it to find the stairs, but the commotion caught the attention of the one in the street. Mokuba struggled and pushed with his hands, but there was no time. As the monster's metallic claws took the first clunking step up the stairs, Mokuba dropped into the gap beneath the house instead. Trembling wildly, holding his breath, he aimed the bat up at the hole and waited. He listened to the steps grow closer… closer… When the beast appeared framed in the splintered edges of wood, Mokuba stabbed the bat upward. A garbled howl and a thud let him know his attack hit its mark.

Without waiting for it to recover, he scrambled toward a square of light, shimmying off of the dirt and onto the grass. The second creature spared him no time to stand. It didn't appear as though he'd been spotted yet, but the bladed feet were coming right for him. Mokuba struck this monster in the knees and rolled away as it fell. Using the bat as a cane to stand, he stared breathlessly as the thing convulsed and gurgled on the ground. Already he could hear the scritch of metal on wood as his first opponent rose for another try. High on adrenaline and without thinking, the boy crushed the skull of the fallen creature with the bat until it stopped moving. Then he took aim as the other hobbled into range. Before it could raise a blade, the bat punched it in the gut. Once it was on the ground, he finished it.

Thick, dark stuff oozed from the crushed, misshapen head. It had a pungent, metallic smell. Mokuba shivered and gulped. His weapon suddenly felt very heavy. He wanted to wake up. If he woke up screaming in his bed, Seto would come. Then Mokuba would grab his big brother in a death grip, bury his face in his neck, and tell him all about this nightmare. Seto would explain how dreams are nothing but 'random neural activity' and Mokuba would feel better, because he had the smartest brother in the world looking out for him.

He allowed himself to escape in that fantasy for a bit, but he also knew that if he stood still too long more monsters would come. Balancing the messy bat on his shoulder, he wandered dazedly into the fog. The fight hadn't been as bad as he thought it would be, but he wasn't looking forward to a repeat performance.

Time dragged on. As he kept his ears open for the telltale screech of the monster's footsteps, another sound reached his ears, so faint he barely heard it.

"Mokuba!"

The young boy's ears perked up at the sound of the blessedly familiar voice. "Seto?" In his excitement, he sped up to a run.

"Mokie, come on, we're gonna be late!"

His yellow and blue sneakers skidded to a stop as he rounded a corner. It was Seto's voice, no doubt about that, but it was also different. Younger. Mokuba turned to the house on his left. Through the fog, he spotted a car in the driveway. A dark-haired woman stood behind the open door on the driver's side. With her back to him, Mokuba couldn't see her face.

"Where is that boy?" The unknown woman huffed.

Confused and faintly wary, but conflictingly happy to see a normal person, Mokuba approached the house. "Hello?" He called.

The woman turned sideways to face the other side of the car, but didn't bat an eye at the boy on the sidewalk. "Would you go see what's keeping your brother?" She asked whoever she was looking at.

As Mokuba watched, a very young Seto Kaiba hurried around the front of the car and headed for the front door. After a stunned pause, Mokuba hurried to follow.

Seto stopped in the threshold and glanced between the stairs and the ground floor. "Where are you?"

"Here!" A small child called from upstairs.

Mokuba's confusion only grew. He could've sworn that sounded like… As he followed young Seto upstairs and into the master bedroom, he froze and dropped his bat. In the room, on the floor, groping for something under the bed, Mokuba saw himself. His self ten years ago, but the age difference didn't make it any less jarring.

"What are you doing?" Seto asked, moving to kneel next to the four-year-old.

"Wanna hug kitty bye," little Mokuba said. "Kitty, come here."

"I'm sure kitty will be here when we come back," Seto said. "Now let's go. Aunt Hakumi's getting impatient."

"But-" Mokuba's younger self was interrupted when his brother tugged him to his feet. As a last ditch effort to get his way, the small boy grabbed half-heartedly at the bedside table, knocking a magazine on the floor. A pamphlet slid out. The two boys didn't notice as the older urged the younger out of the room.

The present day Mokuba, however, bent to pick it up. The title read, "Sunnyside Orphanage." His hands trembled. He barely remembered the scene he'd just witnessed, but he remembered the basic gist of the day. Their aunt told them she was taking them some place special, but instead she left them at that horrible place. Seto later told Mokuba that when they'd stopped outside of the building, she'd explained why she couldn't take care of them, how they'd be better off with another family, and that she wished them luck. He said their uncle was a brute who drank their inheritance and that she sent them off to save them. Mokuba didn't know if that was true or if Seto lied to comfort him.

As he sat on the bed, staring distantly at the folded piece of paper, he wondered what might've happened if he'd turned around one more time. If he'd kicked and screamed until Seto stopped to help him get the cat. He concluded that it probably wouldn't have made much difference if they had noticed the pamphlet. Maybe pulling up in front of the orphanage wouldn't have been such a slap in the face, but it was unavoidable.

Anger rose. So what if Seto hadn't lied about their uncle? Would it really have been worse than that- that- _hell_? And- And _Gozaburo_? Mokuba tore the glossy paper in half, crushed it in both fists, and hurled the crinkled balls at the wall. If he hadn't spent so much time on it already, he might've cried at the memories of 'Sunnyside,' but his well of tears was dry for the time being. Instead, he flopped on the bed to rest for a while, glaring at the cracked ceiling.

**A/N: I couldn't find the names of the orphanage or the relative(s) that dropped Mokuba and Seto off there, so I made some up. I figured that if they did have canon names and the change mattered, someone would get around to commenting on it. Until then, I'll just leave it as is…**


	5. A Crack at the Wall

**A/N: The puzzle at the top makes this chapter look longer than it is. I'm not sure if typing out the puzzles and their answers in such detail is going to make them more or less interesting to readers. On one side, one could stop reading before reaching the answer and have a go at figuring it out oneself. On the other side, it might be tedious to read through. Since Yugi's will be more involved and spread out, and I haven't quite decided how to write it yet, I decided to post this a little early and see what if anything people have to say about the whole puzzle thing.  
**

Seto stood with his feet apart and his arms crossed, studying the text etched into the iron door:

_Fifteen souls burn in hell,_

_fifteen souls with sad tales to tell._

_.  
_

_One consumed by fire fought in vain_

_and screamed for help, but no one came._

_.  
_

_Two lost at sea in a raging storm_

_left two families behind, lost and forlorn._

_.  
_

_Three were betrayed by those they held dear,_

_the scoundrels stabbed them in the back without shedding a tear._

_.  
_

_Four more buried alive, so very unfair,_

_tried to dig themselves out, but ran out of air._

_.  
_

_The final five could no longer stand to draw breath,_

_so they tied ropes in the trees and hanged to death._

_.  
_

_Fifteen souls lost the light of day,_

_fifteen souls will unbar the way._

A star with a jewel at each point sat above the poem. Starting from the top and going clockwise, the jewels were a ruby, an emerald, a diamond, a sapphire, and a topaz. On the right edge, where a doorknob would've been, there was a numeric keypad. He'd already decided not to waste time wondering what a door with an electronic lock was doing in the middle of a rundown cemetery. If it was a puzzle, then the numbers in the poem probably had something to do with the keypad. Seto had already read the poem five times, searching for a clue to their order, but had thus far found nothing.

His eyes drifted to the star and squinted. On closer inspection, he discovered the lines were actually arrows. Red pointed to white, white pointed to brown, etc. The symbol looked vaguely familiar. It was something that touched on the childhood days spent locked in his room with books, book, and more damn books, forced to read until the words blurred and ran together. He squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his fingers to his temples. Those memories weren't welcome. At the same time, he needed to get through that door. He needed to save Mokuba.

Seto took a deep breath and summoned up a picture of Mokie's laughing face. Whenever Seto returned from a business trip, he found the child waiting to pounce the minute he walked in the door. Mokuba would launch himself into the air and tackle Seto hard enough to threaten his balance, no matter how tired and worn out Seto felt. That greeting was his favorite thing about coming home.

His eyes opened slowly and inspected the star. It had been a philosophy book, hadn't it? Five gems, five interconnected points, five… elements… Seto lifted his chin as things started to click. The fire had to be red, and the sea had to be blue. The stanza about being stabbed in the back was a bit more obscure. However, after he ruled out green and brown for the earth and the tree branches, it only left white for metal. Knives were made of metal. Made enough sense.

Since the first line in the poem mentioned burning, he decided to try starting with fire, and pressed one on the keypad. Fire overcame metal, so the next number was three. Then metal to wood, wood to earth, and earth to water. He pressed five, four, and two, and then grinned at the sound of a lock clicking opening. _Interesting move, _he thought with a chuckle, _but you're going to have to do better than obscure puzzles if you want to trip me up._

Beyond the door sat the mausoleums. They squatted in crumbling, rigid rows of six on either side of a weedy pathway made from cracked marble tiles. Thorny vines wove through the bars of the tall gate at the other end, and Seto soon discovered they sealed it shut. Three of the tombs stood open behind him, but he found himself hesitant to go inside. Standing in the entrance, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the gloom, a chill flitted through his stomach. _Don't be ridiculous_, he scolded himself. _Corpses are harmless. Besides, none of it's real._

The ground crunched under his foot as it crossed the threshold. On his right, behind a lavish stone coffin, a gap in the wall revealed the inside of the neighboring crypt. Since the door was closed on that side, he expected it to be darker still than the one he stood in now, but a faint trickle of light shown from an unknown source. Seto climbed over the coffin blocking his way and squeezed sideways into the crack. His coat snagged briefly, but came loose with a jerk.

The layout of this crypt seemed nearly identical to the first. His eyes picked out a larger hole in the back wall, through which still another tomb opened onto a second path with _another_ row of the stony structures. This one ran parallel to the first, but the gate was clear of obstructions. Through the bars, all he could see was more of the same.

He set off, weaving through crypts and pressing through rusted gates. The more holes he forced his way through, the more satisfied he was that he'd chosen casual attire that day. At the time of choice, his physical appearance had been the last thing on his mind and he'd been in too much of a hurry to bother with his more elaborate coats. Though a handful of times he'd still considered leaving the pesky, blue trench coat behind, when it caught on a gate or tugged at his shoulders while slipping through a hole. Stopping to lean against a wall, breathing rather heavily from exertion, he stared up at the sky. The light and weather hadn't changed an iota. Time froze here. It disoriented him a bit. Based on his level of physical fatigue, he estimated that about five hours had elapsed since arriving in the graveyard.

A sound inside the fourth mausoleum across from where he stood drew his attention. It was a slow, inexorable scrape, like stone grinding on stone. Seto straightened up, but the open door blocked his view of the inside. He walked closer. Three doors away. Two doors away. One door-

BOOM!

He paused. Something very heavy had fallen. The sound echoed inside the granite chamber. A plopping noise and a faint, feminine moan followed on its heels. Seto debated between investigating and continuing on his way. A dingy, white hand shot out from behind the door and slapped on the ground. The hand dragged a head into view. Stringy, black hair, missing in chunks, hid the face. Another hand dragged the grotesque woman further into view. Her legs were a shriveled, useless mess. Lacerations decorated her arms and her fingertips were worn bloody from clawing herself along the ground. She moved in a slow, pained fashion with her head hanging limply from its neck, and stopped maybe a yard from Seto's feet. The monster's head snapped up and lolled back, revealing her face.

His azure eyes widened. It wasn't the single, milky eye, the mutilated eye socket next to it, or the holes where the nose used to be, that caused the sudden irregularity in his heartbeat. Her cheeks were sliced clear through, from ear to ear. _Kuchisake-onna…_ The name whispered through his head from a buried corner of his memories.

His uncle had told him the story of the jealous samurai who had mutilated the face of his vain, unfaithful concubine out of jealousy, to ensure no other man would ever find her beautiful again. If little boys stayed out too late or strayed too far from home, he'd said, Kuchisake-onna would catch them and cut their cheeks up, too, with a pair of rusty scissors. Though Seto had dismissed his fear of that fairytale as he matured, the sight of the face that haunted his childhood nightmares, staring at him in defiance of all logic regarding what could exist and what couldn't, was shock enough to send him stumbling backwards.

The monster's aggression increased with his sudden movement. She shrieked—causing her jaw to fall open impossibly wide—crouched down on her hands, and lunged. Her fingers tangled in his coat, using it for purchase as her momentum propelled her up his body and sent him toppling over. Stars exploded in front of his eyes as his head struck a rock. Only the fetid breath washing over his face kept him conscious. Gagging, he turned his head sideways and tangled his fingers in the greasy hair on either side of the creature's head. As he tried to shove her off, a clump ripped loose and he heard teeth snap inches from his ear. One hand gripped her throat to keep her at bay, and the other fumbled for the rock responsible for his headache. Seto snarled into the eye—singular—of the abomination on top of him and cracked the weapon into her temple. When that only phased the creature for a moment, he tried again harder. The third time, she rolled off, moaning, and allowed him to stand. Without hesitating he drove the heel of his shoe into the nape of her neck. Her spine cracked audibly. She ceased twitching and went silent.

Three more thuds from the last three open crypts heralded the arrival of more. This time he expected the flying leap. He grabbed a chunk of the tile that used to pave the path and cast it at the first one, shortly after she launched herself at him. Due to its weight it flew with more force and speed than his Duel Monsters cards, and actually managed to embed in her empty eye socket. That one collapsed with a scream, too preoccupied with digging out the shrapnel to fight back when his foot shoved her face into the ground. The rock drove deeper and she stopped moving. However, during his distraction, another attacker managed to sink her teeth into his calf. With a cry of pained surprise, he kicked her off and stomped her throat. He let the last one leap, but dodged to make her land beside him. He finished her off with a hunk of rubble that required both hands to lift.

No more open doors, so no more of those things, for now. Seto sank into the weeds, clutching his injured head with one hand and his injured leg with the other. The wounds hurt! Not the surreal sting of virtual 'injuries,' but actual, physical _pain_. When he brought his hands up for inspection, he discovered an abstract smear comprised of his and the creatures' blood. Not even the injuries inflicted in Noah's advanced virtual world had caused bleeding.

Furthermore, one of the very few things in the world—no, the universe—that intimidated Seto Kaiba had climbed him like a tree and tried to bite off his face. Had succeeded in damn near mauling his leg… Was it merely coincidence, or was there more to it than that? Could they- No, she, because if he was going to accept that Terra Caligarum might be real, he may as well accept that that devil of a goddess was behind all of this, not some faceless group of conspirators. Could _she_ read his mind? After all, he'd never admitted his fear of Kuchisake-onna to anyone. Not even Mokuba. Especially not Mokuba. Seto had to be flawlessly brave for his little brother.

_Nothing about this place makes any damn sense_. A frustrated hand slapped the ground.

Two things were certain; he'd have to start taking this place more seriously, and he could not let it get to him, no matter what horrors it threw his way. The creatures caught him off guard this time, but he had to remember he'd outgrown horror stories years ago. He'd already taken out four of the monsters, and he could take out four, eight, or even a dozen more if he had to. He clenched his fists and glared at the bodies littering the pathway.

_I will find you, Mokuba. Just hold on._


	6. Breaking the Emotional Crutch

Silence. No whisper of wind in the trees. No chirping birds, no humming insects, no scampering wildlife. No running water. Thick, oppressive, silence.

Ethereal shapes formed and dissipated in the denser pockets of fog. Dark trees loomed overhead. Yugi fidgeted with the hem of his tank top as he walked, occasionally rubbing his arms to stave off the chill in the air. The silence and emptiness teased and twisted his nerves. He couldn't remember a time he'd felt this tiny and isolated. In Domino City his life had always been full of people and noise. Even when his father had never been home, his mother sat listlessly on the couch watching her daytime dramas, and he had been a prime bully target, the overwhelming sense of presence in his environment had wrapped around him in a tangible, concealing blanket.

For the last handful of hours, he'd trudged along telling himself he'd find the end of the path if he maintained his patience, but it looked like the emptiness here would drive him crazy before he reached any kind of destination. "I wonder how Kaiba's doing," he whispered to himself. "I hope he's doing better than me, this forest goes nowhere. Am I missing something?" He stopped to look around, hoping to spot a side-path he might've overlooked. "There's nowhere else to go."

Maybe that wasn't entirely true. Breaking from the path and striking through the wilderness was an option. The trees weren't a solid wall, and he was small enough to force his way through them if he had the will for it. Such a daring venture ran the risk of making him more lost, however. Should he be patient and persistent, or take the more daring route? He had a feeling he was dancing around an important point, but he couldn't decide which option sounded right. Patience was a virtue, but so was bravery. Or maybe neither of those was exactly right, either…

"It's just a choice, Yugi," he mumbled to himself. "Pick one. If you're wrong, something will probably happen to stop you." Just what would happen was also an important point, though. If death made them lose, and thus far nothing remotely deadly had threatened him, then was his initial choice to stay on the path correct?

Or maybe the absence of any action was supposed to be the indicator that he was doing something wrong. That was why he'd stop to reassess is position in the first place, wasn't it?

He wanted to kick himself. Was it so hard to make a decision without confirmation from Atem? Yugi closed his eyes. Playing without rules was playing blind, and playing blind unsettled him. This wasn't like any kind of game he'd played before, so trusting his own logic and intuition on the matter wasn't easy. Still, his intuition had gotten him into the same world as Mokuba, so he had to trust that he could find Mokuba. When he cleared his mind and forced himself to face the silence, he realized… He was vulnerable on the path. It wasn't safe. The stillness had lulled him into a false sense of security, but he wasn't actually alone. It wasn't a presence he could see, hear, or experience in any tangible way, not when it concealed itself in the wall of mist and foliage, and he stood exposed. It was a twist in his gut and a twinge up his spine.

_The permanent residents._

Yugi cast a nervous glance to the forest at his left. The only thing that moved was the fog. All the same he edged sideways into the bushes on his right. A snapping twig pierced the atmosphere like a gunshot. It nearly made him jump out of his skin, but his heartbeat steadied as he realized he'd stepped on the twig himself. "Calm down, Yugi," he whispered under his breath, the words barely more than a series of shapes on his lips.

To avoid losing the road entirely and wandering in endless circles, he worked out a logical approach for navigating the brush. He stood with his back to a tree next to the path and looked straight ahead. Picking out another he tree, he wound his way through the undergrowth until he reached his first mark. Now if he wanted to backtrack, he could turn around and more or less retrace his steps. Supposedly. In this way, he traveled a wavering line deeper and deeper into the woods. He still couldn't quite shake the sensation of being stalked, but the only sounds were the ones created by his self. Resisting the urge to glance over his shoulder and mess up his rhythm, he continued forward.

His bold effort was eventually rewarded as the forest thinned into a clearing. In the fog, he could make out the vague, crumbling silhouettes of some kind of ancient ruins. Mossy bricks nearly half his size smothered scraggly shrubs with their bulk. An immense, concave wall arced gently from one side of the clearing to another. A tree perched atop it at the center. Thick roots curled and molded around the gray-green bricks like wooden octopus tentacles.

Two lines of statues created a sort of aisle up the center of the semi-circle. The state of the statues made it impossible to decipher the original forms of most. At the front on the right was a rather frail looking woman, but with the stone head gone her identity remained a mystery. Another further back and to the left was a male figure kneeling on one knee. His face was worn away, and what appeared to be an outstretched arm had joined the rest of the rubble littering the forest floor. A third was barely recognizable as a woman with a baby at her feet. The others were too eroded. At the end of the statues, through a crack in the tree roots, Yugi spied the mouth of a tunnel. He stopped in front of the kneeling man and studied it more closely. The clothes the statue wore were oddly modern compared to the apparent age of the structure. They looked like slacks and a dress shirt. Moving to the statue with the infant, he wonder why the infant struck a vague chord of recognition in him.

Lost in his contemplations, he didn't notice the furry paws padding along the top of the wall until a shadow fell across him. Freezing on the spot, his neck and torso twisted slowly to bring his gaze up to the shadow's source. A drooling, three-headed dog leered at him hungrily. Each mouth looked big enough to handle him in two bites. Its size, the near-rabid foaming of its jaws, and the crazed starvation in its eyes almost made him miss the creepiest detail of all. The thing was… sewn together? Stitches of rough cord crisscrossed and zigzagged down the middle of its chest and along its belly. The seam parted in a jagged Y shape under the throat of the middle head and appeared to encircle the base of its central neck. Three huge, mangy wolves spliced together into one. The dog crouched, bringing its heads down low.

Yugi knew he could never run from something that big. Besides, fear rooted him to the spot. The yellowed irises of the beast swelled to fill his vision. Time slowed to a crawl as the thing pushed off with its haunches and became airborne. Yugi's gaze slid the height of the wall and landed on the concealed passage, maybe two yards away. He pumped his legs, his feet slipping in the leaves. The monster fell closer. Yugi ducked under it and dove for a gap in the roots, near the base of the wall. As Yugi half slid, half crawled into the relative safety of the hall, the creature thudded to the ground behind him. One head tried to turn around to the left, the other tried to turn around to the right, and the confusion caused the creature to stumble. That momentary disruption was all Yugi needed to pull his feet into shelter. The snapping jaws only missed by inches.

The short teenager continued to retreat until his back hit a wall behind him. The Cerberus monstrosity stuck first one paw then another through any space it could fit. When it failed to reach its prey, all three heads growled viciously. Boy and beast stared each other down through the tangle of roots. Two of the heads lifted and craned to see around them, looking for another entrance, while the third persisted in clawing and gnawing at the tree.

Yugi flinched at the sight of the stitches straining under the force of the creature's three opposing wills. Was this what the woman who ran this place meant by the suffering of the permanent residents? Had the animal in front of him been human at one time? Despite his fear, he felt a twinge of pity for it. However, that didn't change the fact that it would kill him without a thought if it could. Remaining flat on the wall, he stood and edged sideways past the entrance. Out of its reach, he finally took time to investigate his surroundings.

The hallway he occupied ran off in two directions on either side of him. Faint trickles of light pierced through the occasional crack in the brickwork, but the tiny stars did little to illuminate the darkness. He did notice that the straightness of the passage indicated it didn't follow the curvature of the outside wall. The lack of clear vision made him wary, but there would be no turning back the way he'd come. Dragging one hand along the wall to guide himself, shuffling his feet carefully to avoid tripping, and listening intently for any further danger, he fumbled his way deeper into the ruins. The long hallway took two sharp, right turns, into a part of the structure where no light came. After a third corner, he spotted a square of firelight at the end. His heart leaped in relief.

Beyond the doorless threshold he found a large room. Flames from a pit in the center of the floor bathed it in orange light and the mouth of another tunnel gaped at him from the opposite wall. In a slightly raised alcove on his right, two figures underneath red silk sheets reclined on mahogany altars. Yugi crossed the floor, climbed the steps, and walked the length of the statues. He froze as he laid eyes on their faces. He couldn't tell if the figures were supposed to look asleep or dead. Their faces were blank, but tranquil. "…Mom? Dad?"

It had been years since he'd seen his father. Last time he'd been so young that he could only remember his dad's face thanks to old photographs. In those days, when it had been just the pair of them—his mother and father—traveling the world, they'd looked so happy. Not like now, with his mom's apathy and his father's disregard. Once a year Yugi's father reminded him that he was still alive and thinking of his son, when he sent a package on Yugi's birthday. There was never a card. Only the impersonal 'To and From' inscription. He couldn't blame his dad, though. All of it was his mother's fault…

Yugi forced back the painful feelings welling up in his heart. The hate that caused him so much guilt. He couldn't stomach the trains of thought his mind rode off on when it had nothing else to occupy it. Searching for such a distraction, he quickly surveyed the rest of the chamber. The wall he'd overlooked coming in was painted with an odd, faded design. A vertical rectangle extended upward from a square indentation. Around these two shapes, filling out a larger rectangle, lines traced out winding, sharp-edged shapes, like a maze. The paths all dead ended at a dozen smaller squares, seven of which had pictures carved into them. Five of the pictures were triangles in various sizes, one was a square, and the last a parallelogram.

Unsure what to make of it for now, Yugi turned his attention to the fire pit. There were seven unlit torches in a stand next to it, so he used one to check out the other hallway. It mirrored the movements of the first hall almost exactly, except for the tunnels branching off on his left. Then again, the other side could've had tunnels he'd missed in the dark. If it truly was a mirror, then the wall he'd used for guidance would've been blank, too. As he walked, he noticed a door with two shapes carved above it—a square and a large triangle. The others he'd passed had been blank. He hesitated and tried to visualize the wall-art again. "A map?" He whispered. "So that means… This goes to the room with the square and the one of the rooms with a triangle… Are the rooms with the shapes good or bad?"

Since investigating was the only way to solve that mystery, Yugi hesitantly made his way into the tunnel. He soon discovered walking straight to his destination wouldn't necessarily be easy. The tunnels wound through the ruins like boxy veins, with side tunnels spidering off here and there. Tunnels that led to his destination were still marked with the related shape—he'd found one marked with a single square and decided to focus on that first—but the idea of backtracking to the main room after all of this didn't seem promising. If it took too long, the torch might extinguish. He didn't relish the idea of being stuck in a pitch black maze.

Attempting to shake off the grip of fear, he focused on finding that room, and he did, not too long later. A door loomed ahead. Beyond it, an empty room approximately six feet cubed greeted him. Three round holes at about chest level, for Yugi, created a line across the rear wall. Above that, in lettering that resembled a demented child's finger painting, were the words, '_Steel your faith and reach right in, but be warned, if you're wrong, you'll release a Dead Twin.'_

"Dead Twin?" Yugi shuddered and glanced around the room. He didn't like the sound of that. Whatever he sought, it was in one of those holes. How could he pick the right one? Luck? Joey was the lucky one. On his own, Yugi's luck tended to vary. His tendency to get sucked into situations like this, for example, where his actions affected the fate of his soul—that was some poor luck. Being born so short and apparently punchable. Being dealt a crazy mother…

Yugi reached for the hole on the right, hesitated, and drew his hand back. He had a one out of three chance to get it right, but the odds weren't exactly in his favor. After a couple more false starts, he closed his eyes and thrust his hand in the left opening. Nothing happened. He reached farther, all the way up to his shoulder, feeling around. Still nothing. So he'd chosen wrong, right? But he was still alone in the room.

BANG!

Somewhere in the vastness of the ruins, he heard a door slam open and then creak shut.

"Crap," he whispered in a wavering voice. He had to get out of here fast. Panicking a little, he thrust his hand into the next one down, but the middle was empty, too. As soon as he drew his hand out, another bang echoed through the corridors. He groaned and finally found an object in the last hiding place. It was a small, copper square, with a thickness that matched the depth of the indentation he'd seen. _The pieces must all fit in there somehow._ It reminded him of a puzzle he'd had in elementary school, but he couldn't visualize how exactly it went together off the top of his head. There wasn't time to think about it right then, so he thrust the piece deep in his pocket.

At first he only opened the door enough to stick the light and his upper body through. The glow flickered and danced on the walls and floor of the empty passage. Yugi sidled out of the room and closed the door as quietly as he could. The click of the latch echoed, and he winced. Sound carried far too well in this place.

No matter how lightly he stepped, the scuff of his sneakers bounded playfully off the bricks. He paused to consider carrying them and grew aware of another noise. Faint, labored breathing filled the tunnel, reverberating off the walls until Yugi couldn't be sure which direction it came from. He'd already passed a couple of side tunnels, so that didn't exclude the possibility of it being behind him. Or maybe there were two… Dead Twins?... closing in on him from both sides. Yugi tightened his grip on the torch and willed the knots out of his stomach. If he panicked again, things would only get worse. Forcing himself to ignore the noise—he'd worry about it when he ran into whatever was responsible for it—he checked the backs of the stone archways lining the tunnel until he found a square mark. If he'd gone through it going one way last time, all he had to do was go through it backwards to retrace his steps. He didn't know why that hadn't occurred to him before, but felt rather pleased with himself for figuring it out.

As he rounded a corner, almost out based on the number of signs he'd passed, the breathing sound stopped him again. It sounded closer, and just beneath he heard dragging footsteps. As it grew louder still, Yugi realized the source blocked his way out of the tunnel. He'd have to find a way around it, or at least hide until it moved on. Maybe it would get lost. Though so would he, if he started running off on unmarked paths. His eyes darted around and picked out the triangle sign. They flicked back and forth between the symbol and the dancing flame. He might have just enough time. Yugi went for the second piece.

)0(

Yugi groaned, briefly hoping his eyes were playing tricks on him, or at least that this whole situation was some kind of nightmare.

The firelight he so depended on waned and flickered in a most nerve-wracking manner. There were two Dead Twins wandering around all ready, the second one had evidently managed to see him—from far around a corner, before he'd even glimpsed it—and was probably about to burst through the door behind him any minute. Even though he'd tried so hard to sneak away, he'd heard it following him the whole way here, panting, hissing, and occasionally grunting followed by wet splat. On top of that, as if to rub his problems in his face, _this_ room had _four_ holes for him to choose from. He could be stuck with as many as _five _Dead Twins chasing him, and he didn't need to see them to guess that would be bad news. Then if all of his options kept increasing by one each room…

There wasn't any time to think out a logical answer for the dilemma of guessing right, though he was sure there had to be one. With one ear constantly on the gasps and groans outside the door, drawing closer with each second, Yugi couldn't concentrate. Maybe by using both hands he could even his odds. It wouldn't be his top choice in the long run, but it would give him the time he needed now. Wedging the torch in the cracked floor to keep it upright, Yugi reached for two hiding places at the same time. Two doors somewhere out there banged open simultaneously, before Yugi even made it up to his wrists. That had been a bad idea. It wasn't about luck, or about odds. But what else could he have done? What was he missing?

The breathing in the hallway was so loud he could almost feel it on the nape of his neck. His hands tried to block out the noise by shielding his ears, while his eyes reexamined the smudged lettering on the wall. It was the same message about steeling his faith. His faith in what? What had been different about the recess he found the puzzle piece in? Ugh, if he hadn't second-guessed himself in the first place, those two things wouldn't be out here. Why couldn't he be strong all by himself?

Wait, that was it! His first guess had been correct, but he'd doubted himself and had failed the test. Trying two at a time hadn't helped, either. He had to pick one choice and be secure in his decision. It wouldn't be that easy this time, though. For the life of him, he couldn't recall his first impression of which to choose.

An echoing thud jerked him out of his thoughts. Something crashed against the door, clawing and pounding frantically on the obstruction. It sounded huge.

What difference did one more enemy make at this point? If he allowed the monster to chase him out without his prize, he'd only need to return later, and he refused to do this more often than necessary. Ignoring the fifth chastising bang as he did so, Yugi reached into both openings, closed a hand around the copper triangle, and pocketed it without looking. The pounding stopped, but a wet splash followed by a bubbling hiss leaked into the silence. The teen whipped around and watched as the wood corroded from the outside. The smoking edges peeled back like paper receding from a candle, revealing a scrawny, gray torso with some sort of large growth consuming its left side. A bulbous head with wide, dark eyes forced into the opening. The creature twisted and a bony shoulder followed, but no matter how it struggled the growth prevented it from going any farther. It locked gazes with the youth and hissed, pawing at him with a withered arm.

Though it lost some momentum, the wood continued to dissolve outward. It wouldn't hold the monster at bay much longer. The monster hissed its frustration once more, withdrew a tad, and then rammed forward. As it did so, a gush of black liquid spewed from its mouth. Yugi dodged and the substance splattered the bricks instead, eating into them as eagerly as it consumed the wood. The wood that cracked threateningly under the force of the creature's impact.

Yugi snatched the torch in case the Dead Twin let loose a second shot of bile and put the flame out. At the thought of the fire, he briefly imagined setting the door alight. That would certainly stop this monstrosity, but it sounded like horrible way to die. He didn't want to hear it scream or smell it cooking, or any of the other nasty things he guessed went with burning alive. Besides, wasn't this ugly thing just another victim of Goddess Tesseract's twisted game? Some poor soul who'd lost everything and been left to wander in the dark? What happened to a soul that lost twice?

One more hard ram and the monster stumbled into the room. It took a moment to catch its balance which also gave Yugi a moment to observe the source of its name. The almost fetal creature shared an arm and half a torso with a bulbous, muscular corpse. The dead, conjoined sibling smothered and dragged down its underdeveloped half. When the thing tried to walk, it could barely shuffle along, and it panted heavily under its burden. Yugi took the opportunity to dash around it on its dead side and escape into the hall.

)0(

"So far, so good," Yugi muttered, listening to the jingle jangle of seven pieces of copper in his pockets. All he had to do now was round up the monsters in some out of the way corner of the maze and leave them there. He knew four were already following him, but he'd yet to find the other three. Despite his best efforts, there were now seven Dead Twins wandering around the ruins. A previous attempt to ditch them in one of the map's unmarked rooms had inadvertently woken two more. Too late, he'd made the connection between those rooms and the sounds that signaled their appearance in the maze. Now he had to find some other way to get rid of them.

In theory, the plan he had devised wasn't necessarily hard, but if he didn't time his movements exactly right he'd never get out of here. Along the way, he'd discovered that the monsters weren't attracted by the sight of him, and not necessarily to the sounds he made, but rather the light he carried. Though that didn't mean they wouldn't melt him into a puddle if they caught him. Brighter lights tended to take precedence.

The huffing sounds behind Yugi faltered, so he turned to check on his stalkers. The group filled the corridor, wall to wall. Waiting patiently for them to catch up, and even waving the firelight to encourage them to move faster, went against all of Yugi's instincts when it came to self-preservation. He hated confrontation. If his friends weren't in danger, and he couldn't escape, he'd rather let the bullies beat him and get it out of their system.

Once he'd assured the pack behind him was still intact, he kept walking. He'd managed to save an extra torch and he now carried both. One had yet to be lit, and the other burned low. His plan was to get the monsters together, light the fresh torch, and leave it behind to distract them. Using the dimmer light source, he'd make his way back to the main room. If only he could remember exactly how the pieces in his pocket had fit together to make a square. He knew the two big triangles formed half of it, but he always fumbled the parallelogram.

As he passed a branching tunnel, a gob of acid vomit whizzed over his head and splattered the wall. Some drops of back-splash spattered his shirt. The fabric delayed the consequence, but a split second later the burning sensation forced a scream from his throat. He'd found number five. Unfortunately, his cry of pain and the smell of bile burning flesh riled up the monsters behind him, and more black globs struck the floor at his feet, splattering his shoes. He remained out of range for now, but they'd picked up their pace, and his second torch flickered dangerously low. _All right, five out of seven it is._

As he retreated backwards, he touched the rag-tipped ends together. The sudden flare of the second torch lighting stunned the monsters for a split instant. Then they came at him faster still. Yugi planted the stick in the ground like a flag and ran, half waiting for the burning sensation to reach through his sneakers and attack his toes. He didn't slow until he reached the edge of the orange circle. A glance over his shoulder showed the monsters had lost interest in him, clustering instead around the light like gnats around a streetlamp. As they closed the circle, their immense, dead burdens sealed in the bright glow and left Yugi alone with his meager illumination. His pace faltered as he toed off and hopped out of his destroyed shoes. Even more awkwardly, due to passing the torch from one hand to another and temporarily losing his vision mid-process, he clawed off his shirt and attempted to wipe the searing sludge from his skin. It dulled the sharpness of the pain.

Keeping at a jog, so the air flow caused by running wouldn't put out the steadily weakening flame, the teenager continued on to the central chamber. He rounded corner after corner, counting tunnels and faltering only to confirm the signs. Twice he counted wrong and lost time searching for the correct archway. Just as he rounded the corner into the final straightaway, the flame puffed out. It felt like someone pegging him in the gut with a ball of ice. The solidity of the darkness knocked the wind out of him. His body wouldn't move.

Gradually, the portion of his mind that retained its composure reminded him that all he had to do was continue forward until he hit the blank wall. Turning left along it would take him straight to his goal. Straight to the light. It didn't take much more urging for the rest of his mind to allow his limbs to move him forward.

The painfully familiar sound of heavy breathing triggered a stifled groan. As the light of his final destination grew brighter, the sound grew proportionately louder. Of course a Dead Twin had found its way into that room. It was the brightest source of light in the place. Yugi debated luring the creature into the hall and losing it in the loop. The two symmetrical hallways both came out of the room and met at the entrance of the ruins in a large square. However, the creature would only follow him so far before it lost him in the inky pitch and decided to return to the light source. His hands clenched into frustrated fists.

He'd have to work around it.

Yugi crept to the door and peeked inside. The creature stood in the middle of the room mesmerized by the fire pit. Yugi ducked out and held up his shirt. Cotton offered more protection than bare skin, but it hadn't dried yet and it might burn him again if he touched it. The acid had transformed the fabric into ratty swish cheese, anyhow. He decided to leave it in the hallway to free both hands, and return for it a bit later. Retreating a few steps to ensure the monster couldn't hear him, he used both hands, a foot, and all of his strength to snap the spent torch into three pieces. Then, readying the three puzzle pieces he knew he needed first, he returned to the threshold and threw a stick behind the farthest altar.

The creature's head snapped up, and it lumbered over to investigate. As it did so, Yugi sidled into the room and edged quietly along the wall. Abandoning his shoes turned out to work in his favor at this point. The Dead Twin stumbled on the steps and Yugi reached the indentation. The two largest triangles each shared a corner to fill in half of the square. The medium triangle went in the opposite corner. The rest needed to be arranged down the center. Yugi heard the monster bump against the heavy tables and cast a glance over his shoulder, searching his pocket for the small triangles. His hand closed around one, and the monster realized there was nothing hiding in the corner. It turned to resettle by the fire. Obsidian orbs locked with purple irises. Air hitched in Yugi's throat. He frantically snapped the shape home before a telltale grunt signaled the time to tuck and roll. Viscous fluid painted the wall an oily black. Yugi waited for the monster to get close, let it wind up to hurl, and then darted for the far corner once more. In that way, luring it to a corner as he dug a puzzle piece from his pocket, and then running to slap it into place while the monster struggled to keep up, he managed to finish his task relatively unscathed. A click echoed through the room and the entire wall shifted upward. Yugi backtracked only long enough to retrieve his shirt and the last two pieces of torch before diving through the opening.

As soon as he made it through, the wall slammed shut behind him. He hadn't realized the stuffiness of the maze until the fresh, damp air washed over his arms and chest in a ripple of goose bumps. Chilled by the stone tiles, his toes curled inside his socks. High overhead, makeshift skylights painted a line of light gray squares on the floor of the new passage. "It's always evening," he murmured, squinting.

Shaken from his weary daze by his own voice, he held up his shirt. Rays of light punctured the fabric until it resembled a night sky. Whatever the Dead Twins spat at him, however, seemed to have cooled into dormancy. He slipped the garment over his head. It didn't help much, but it was better than nothing. Tucking the torch fragments under his arm, in case he needed them, the short boy set off. The empty tunnel stretched on forever, but this time he welcomed the peace. He needed to time catch his breath and think. For instance, he wondered how long he'd been missing. He wondered how long it took for Joey and Tristan to go see what was keeping Kaiba and him. He worried one of them would find the card and use it. "All the more reason to get home as soon as possible," he said to himself.

His thoughts couldn't help turning to his mother next. How would she take his disappearance, assuming she noticed before he returned? Would she finally start to worry, to feel something, or would she continue to drift in her drug addled haze, tucked obliviously away in some corner of the hospital? No, she wouldn't remain completely oblivious. Grandpa would tell her if Yugi went missing. Her and his dad. His dad would care, but would he care enough to fly home? Yugi couldn't tell. Besides, that line of thinking hurt too much.

Yugi shut off his thoughts and stared blankly forward instead. He could see a growing speck of light in the distance, signaling, he hoped, an exit. As he drew closer, the stones transformed into a sidewalk that ran through a hedge. Excitement filled him and he summoned up the strength to lengthen his stride. The bushes parted and he spotted the outline of an immense building beyond them. Closer still and he could pick out details like windows and… "No way…" he breathed in disbelief. "What is _that_ doing here?"

**A/N: Sorry for the delay. The chapter was long. And a bit difficult. Yugi's baby pandaness rebels against this setting. The Kaiba brothers are easier and more interesting, I think. Oh, I appreciate the reviews, by the way. I never know if silence is a good thing or a bad thing. Much like Yugi, it would seem… heh…**


	7. Dark Days at Sunnyside Part 1

**A/N: This chapter actually wound up being 17 pages long, so I divided it up into three hopefully more digestible parts. The other parts will be up as soon as I get the chance to read over them a couple times.**

Mokuba jolted upright at the sound of a burbling growl, but soon realized it was only his stomach. He wasn't ready to pull out of his not-quite-sleep state, but at full consciousness his churning stomach was too much to ignore. It didn't actually hurt, at least not as much as he knew it should. It was more of a discomfiting, heavy numbness, similar to the sensation of Novocain after a dentist appointment. The strange stillness of time that kept the level of light so constant seemed to have seeped into his very organs, suspending his metabolism.

He forced himself to stand and cracked his stiff back. The filthy carpet crunched under his feet as he made his way into the hall, his bat propped on his shoulder. Rotting wood groaned in complaint as he padded carefully down the stairs. At the bottom, he proceeded to examine the house he hadn't seen in a decade.

He couldn't remember enough to know if the depiction was accurate. He continued his exploration until a piece of paper on the coffee table froze him in place. It was the pamphlet he'd destroyed upstairs, crumpled around the edges and taped back together. His eyes darted around the remains of the living room. The debris cast strange shadows against the water stained walls, but there was no other life in the house.

Mokuba picked the pamphlet up between two fingers. It seemed thicker than it had been before. Tucking the bat under one arm—he didn't dare put it down—his hands pealed open the folds. Inside he discovered a map of the town. In a far corner of it, red pen marked a large building as 'exit.' Behind the map, trapped in the tape holding the torn paper together, he found a brass key. The key struck an unsettlingly familiar cord.

As he brushed his hand over it, a flash of that key jangling on a key ring filled his head. A wrinkled hand with cheap fake nails hung it on a high hook. Mokuba gasped and dropped the papers. The key to the iron gate. The mistress kept the keys carefully out of reach, so that the kids couldn't run off. Mokuba had stolen it once, to visit the park where his dad used to take him and Seto. Seto had risked his neck to go out and bring his little brother back. Of course Mokuba hadn't wanted to return, but he hadn't much choice. If the mistress had noticed his absence _and_ had to send people after him, she would've banished him to the Quiet Room for months. The Quiet Room… Sunnyside hid a lot of horrifying things behind cheerful facades and innocent names.

As much as he wanted to escape this decaying world, he wasn't sure if searching the orphanage for the exit was worth it. Heck, the orphanage didn't have any business being here in the first place. This world clearly didn't belong anywhere near the reality where he grew up.

Pocketing the key and studying the map for road names, Mokuba made his way to the kitchen. He had to keep his optimism high. Maybe this time he'd find some palatable water or food. Glancing nervously at each window he passed, he checked the refrigerator first. Empty beer bottles cascaded out. Slamming the door on the horrid smell, he moved on to the cupboards. Nothing but dusty boxes of moldy cereal. As his attention returned to the window over the sink, he locked eyes with a pair of horizontal, slit pupils set in golden irises. The eyes themselves were set in a black, rubbery face. A sticky hand pawed at the glass. The friction created a sound like nails on a chalk board.

_Not again._ Mokuba groaned and clenched the bat tighter, backing out the kitchen door. This new thing didn't look as threatening as the bladed creatures, but it retained a nightmarish peculiarity that turned his mouth to cotton.

About two hundred pounds of sticky rubber tackled him from behind, clinging desperately with arms around his shoulders and legs around his waist. It jarred the bat from his hands and knocked the wind from his lungs. Mokuba's breath wheezed in his chest as he tried to refill his lungs, but the pressure from the constricting limbs prevented proper expansion. The boy's hands clawed reflexively at the pliable skin, the boy himself too panicked for oxygen to contemplate what might be attacking him, or how it got in the house, or search for his fallen weapon. However, the harder he fought the tighter it clung, grunting and keening frantically in his ear. _Gonna smother… _Its weight forced him to the floor where he dragged himself across the carpet, trying to… scrape it off, or maybe crawl away. He didn't know which.

His hand brushed the leg of an overturned chair. He couldn't see anymore, what with his hair in his face and the way his attacker's arms had worked their way up around his neck. Such a position allowed for more efficient strangling. Hoping the chair wouldn't be too heavy, Mokuba gripped the leg and attempted to swing it over his shoulder. The rotted wood snapped and the leg came off in his hand. Too brittle to bludgeon. Mokuba stabbed instead. The creature gushed like a water balloon filled with red jelly. Warm liquid seeped into his shirt and glued the fabric to his skin, but the grip loosened. The wood penetrated the rubbery shoulder over and over, making squishy slopping noises the boy could barely hear over the increasingly desperate moans. Finally, the moans petered off and Mokuba rolled the sagging corpse off of him.

Through the gray filter of his returning vision, he only paid the body enough mind to acknowledge its similarity to the thing watching him in the kitchen. These monsters possessed humanoid hands, capable of opening doors. Houses alone were no longer fortresses. Coughing deep in his chest to clear his throat and shock his lungs into function, Mokuba hastily collected the bat, the map, and checked his pocket for the key. Unnatural blood matted his hair and leaked into the crack between his yellow vest and his striped shirt, where it pooled in a pocket of clammy goo. He shuddered, but there wasn't much he could do. If he paused or backtracked, something would probably attack him again. A growing conviction told him the town possessed a mind of its own, and that omniscient intelligence grew weary of his lagging.

There weren't many direct paths to the circled destination. High fences cut off the alleys between the houses and, as he progressed into a small business district, between the shops. According to the map, the road he followed ran west past a hospital, where it joined with another and went north straight to his destination. However, it dead ended well before of the hospital. The obstacle was far stranger than the maze of concrete, bricks, chain link, and wooden planks that composed the world he now inhabited. Here, the road sheared off in a crumbling cliff. Even the buildings on either side of him sagged over the edge, one torn nearly in half by gravity and the other barely holding together. Testing the unstable ground with each step, Mokuba inched as close to the ledge as he dared and gazed into the misty infinity of the abyss. No bottom. No opposite side. He'd reached the end of the world.

Glancing around to make sure he was still alone, Mokuba pulled out the map. Aside from the street names, it wasn't very reliable. It didn't show any of the blockades impeding his progress. It certainly didn't mention anything about the ravine. He'd have to try every street until he found a way to cut north. It was too bad he didn't have something to mark the dead ends. He moved to close the map and crinkled his nose when it stuck to gore on his fingertips. What he wouldn't give for running water right about now.

As he contemplated a bloody thumb print, a rather morbid idea occurred to him. While part of him crowd proudly at his resourcefulness, a deeper part cringed at the macabre way the town affected his imagination. Finding a couple strands of hair that were still damp, he managed to scrub a light, red smear across the missing chunk of road. Hoping it wouldn't count as backtracking and merit another attack, he retraced his steps.


	8. Dark Days at Sunnyside Part 2

Red smears dominated the map, and Mokuba was no closer to his destination. The roads he followed herded him in a northeastern direction, drawing him away from his destination even as he moved toward it. He kept waiting for a hidden door, a narrow alley, anything to bring him around where he needed to be, but he received no such gift. _This isn't fair, _he thought as he slumped against a brick wall. If the town wouldn't play along, how could he possibly hope to do what needed to be done? This place had him at the end of his rope! Only one more street and he'd be at the edge of the map. He had to be close now, right?

The narrow street opened on a much wider, perpendicular one. One that ran left until it disappeared into the fog a yard or two beyond his position. Mokuba grinned and took off running, desperation and a sort of mad hope propelling him forward. _Yes! Yes, yes, yes- No…_ He slowed to a stop as yet another rusted wall materialized through the mist. This had to be wrong. He pulled out the map and drew in the new barrier. The barrier effectively finished cutting him off from the whole west side of town.

"No…" he whispered out loud this time. It was all a big tease to rub his predicament in his face, wasn't it? The town had him trapped and it wasn't ever going to let him leave. It kept him barely alive enough to prolong its demented amusements, but it possessed no intention of helping him flee. This torture wouldn't stop until a monster killed him, or his body finally ran down from stress and lack of nutrition. Of course if the isolation and constant twilight drove him completely insane first, none of that would matter.

And most of all, no more Seto. Indigo eyes widened at a sudden realization. Mokuba's focus on staying alive and saving himself had overshadowed his thoughts regarding what the older Kaiba must be going through right now. What would happen to Seto if Mokuba disappeared forever? His big brother would be all alone, too, robbed of the last person in his life that he could still love and trust. The last person who still loved Seto in return.

The kid's face squinched up. His jaw tightened. His fists clenched and shook. Then he screamed in frustration and threw himself at the wall. "Let me out of here! Just let me the hell out!" He swung the bat and struck the wall with a loud clang. "What do you want from me? This isn't fair!" He attacked the barrier as though he could break through it himself. "I." _Clang!_ "Hate." _Clang!_ "This." _Clang!_ "Place!"

Gradually his tantrum petered out into gasping breaths and the dying echoes of metal on metal. "I'm so sick of this. Just let me out. I'll do anything I have to." His forehead pressed to the cold, scratchy rust. "My brother doesn't have anyone else. He needs me. Please, let me go home." Mokuba closed his eyes, continuing to plead under his breath; unsure of what he hoped would happen. Maybe the spirit of the town would hear his pleas and be reasonable. Of course the next thing he heard still didn't surprise him: the clattering sound of every bladed monstrosity within earshot closing in on his position.

He twisted slowly around, peering through his matted hair at the ragged silhouettes of about a dozen monsters stumbling up the street. More joined them along the way, appearing from side streets and broken shop windows, but it didn't frighten Mokuba anymore. The anger and desperation had burned the terror out of him, leaving him with nothing but a sense of bored calm.

Time slowed as he watched the approaching hoard. Standing with his side to the impossibly high wall, in the middle of an empty street, Mokuba shoved the map into his pocket, planted his feet shoulder width apart, and cocked the bat over his shoulder. _One, two, three, four…_ He swung with a force that sent the closest creature sprawling. A smug sense of satisfaction filled the boy's heart. Turning a steely gaze to his next opponent, he rushed the monsters, swinging wildly and viciously to clear a path down the middle of the crowd.

On the other side, he faltered to glance over his shoulder. Many of the creatures broke into blind skirmishes, squabbling bloodily amongst themselves. The four closest to Mokuba, however, managed to break off and maintain their pursuit. He decided to press for a little more distance before fighting them. Maybe he could split them up, or confuse them enough to circle around behind. That was his plan, until he heard a rhythmic, wet, slapping noise in the fog ahead of him. Something dark and unwelcomingly familiar leaped like a frog and landed on all fours close enough for him to see the sheen of its rubbery skin. Unblinking yellow eyes locked on him as two more landed on either side of it. Unable to reverse his direction, what with the other monsters too close behind him, Mokuba froze instead. The new enemies were more difficult to escape, but easy to kill. With something sharp, he could take out each one in a single jab.

Once more, time crawled as his eyes darted over his shoulder. Then they returned to the line of hoppers in front of him. Their hindquarters tensed and the boy crouched in anticipation of their attack. If even one of them managed to snag him with its sticky hand, everything would end here. He'd be simultaneously crushed and stabbed to death. They leaped in unison. Mokuba hit the dirt and watched the trio sail toward the bladed beasts behind him.

The first hopper collided with the closest slasher and clung to the front of it with all of its might. The blind creature stumbled and almost fell, dazed and confused by the sudden attack. Unfortunately, the last hoppers fell short of their targets and began to turn around. Mokuba's eyes went wide and he almost jumped up to face them head on. Then the hoppers screamed as bladed feet drove into them from behind. Due to Mokuba's lack of movement and the proximity of the newer sounds, the strange group of monsters turned on each other just as the other group had. _They're thick as bricks,_ Mokuba thought, surprised, but no less grateful for the advantage.


	9. Dark Days at Sunnyside 3

Since he'd already come so far, Mokuba decided to keep exploring this part of the town, figuring he may find something useful, even if it wasn't what he'd originally come seeking. Now, as he stood at the far end of the street blinking at the looming gate, a fresh wave of insanity washed over him.

"The map- you…" Laughter bubbled in his chest until it forced out an unbalanced giggle. "You're horrible…" The air held its tongue in return, but it couldn't fool him anymore. The mist possessed its own, strange sentience and it manipulated his path through it on an unknown whim. Still, why had it given him the map if he could reach the orphanage by traveling away from the red circle that had been marked for him? Maybe it had been a joke, or a test, or… or maybe Sunnyside was merely a pit stop on the way to his real goal.

There was no time to contemplate the purpose of these strange machinations right now. His hand slipped into his pocket and produced the old key. A padlock watched him with its single, dark eye. The gate wore it like an ugly necklace. This couldn't really be Sunnyside, could it? Nothing in this world was oriented the way it should have been. Maybe it was some kind of evil, alternate dimension version of the place. Another item added to his list of Things to Figure Out Later. For now, he pushed the key into the lock and turned it.

Beyond the walls, an abandoned playground brooded in a thinner patch of mist. Rust consumed the slide like an aggressive disease. A swing dangled from a single chain, dragging its broken edge in the dirt. The worst feature, however, was the sandbox. It rested on the ground, yet the middle dipped as though the structure had caved into a hole beneath it. Blood spattered the area within and just around the edge of the dip. Was there something under there, waiting for him to get close so that it could rear up and drag him kicking and screaming into the earth? Maintaining a safe distance, Mokuba stepped lightly past the warped, childhood memory, one ear cocked for the slightest hint of trouble. It was sort of funny to see the play yard in such disrepair, considering it had only ever served as a mask to begin with. Right up front, something bright, cheerful, and childlike that distracted from the madness deeper inside the building.

The front door was unlocked. Mokuba opened it slowly, anticipating another attack at any moment. Dull light spilled across the grungy floor of an otherwise dark room. No power. They were only allowed to use electricity on visitor and adoption days, anyway.

_It's an excess._ _A modern indulgence for an unhealthy soul_, the head-mistress hissed in his skull.

The only way out was through this building. Mokuba didn't know exactly how yet, but he was sure of it. Holding the door with one foot, he pawed around in the dark until he found an old waiting bench. His muscles protested the awkward stretching as he dragged it toward him without moving his foot. After a bit of a struggle, he wedged the bench lengthwise between the door and its frame to prop it open. The light from outside barely helped, but he could see enough to make out the reception area. Much like the rest of the town, this version of Sunnyside must've been deserted for years. A counter opposite him held a vase of wilted flowers, brochures and pamphlets yellowed by time, and the massive sign-in book, all resting under a generous layer of dust. Behind the decrepit receptionist's desk, he spied the barely discernable outline of a door.

In a flash, the room appeared to him in its old glory. Aunt Hakumi leaned on the counter to speak to a man in a crisp, white shirt. Mokuba and Seto sat on the carpet playing with some blocks the orphanage left in the waiting room—another deception to prevent visitors from asking questions. Seto glanced up from whatever game the four-year-old had sucked him into and his eyes locked on the woman's back. For a split second, an all too familiar scowl flitted across the nine-year-old's angelic face.

"Seto, lookit what I did," Mokuba said, glancing up from his tower when his brother didn't respond. "Seto?" The little boy looked concerned. Possibly frightened.

Seto forced a smile and tousled Mokuba's hair. "That's great. See if you can make it taller."

As young Mokuba grinned proudly and returned his attention to the blocks, young Seto cast one more baleful glare at the adults before refocusing on his brother.

_Keep playing, Mokuba. I'll worry about the bad things. I'm used to it. You just keep playing and don't ever look back._

Snapped into the present, teenage Mokuba closed his eyes and shook his head. Seto's voice had drifted through his mind like a thought, but it also been so loud and clear that he could've sworn it came from the air around him. It wasn't part of the memory, because he'd never heard Seto say that directly. It was, however, a concept Mokuba may have entertained a long time ago, and perhaps a message from his subconscious. A message that filled him with the guilt of a different memory, from a time he'd repressed mercilessly.

_BANG! _

_Click._

The darkness on his eyelids grew darker. They snapped open, but for a moment it seemed they were still closed. He knew without checking that the front door had shut for good. Some unseen force had locked him inside. His first impulse told him to whip around and see if whatever had done it remained behind him, but he quickly realized if he tried that, he'd lose all sense of direction in the perfect blackness. As the door behind the counter came to mind, he realized he already faced the exact direction he needed. Shuffling his feet to avoid tripping, hands outstretched like a sleepwalker, Mokuba fumbled around the desk and found the knob on the wall behind it.

Beyond the second threshold, a corridor extended into the heavy shadows. Windowed doors lined it on either side. More windows lined the right side of the building, so the doors on the right side of the hall created a line of hovering, pale rectangles. However, the twice-filtered light did little to assist his exploration. Mokuba needed to restore the electricity first. The fuse box almost had to be in the head mistress's office, where she could keep it under lock and key.

A crash and a scream from one of the classrooms caught his attention. Was it real or another vision? There was only one way to find out. Mokuba readied his bat and opened the door. The boarded up windows let in just enough light to reveal two bloated, waddling shapes closing in on a much smaller figure huddled in the corner. They reeked of blood and pus, pungent enough for the odor to pierce his nostrils from across the room.

"Help, someone, help," the figure moaned. "Why won't anyone help?"

Mokuba bounded across the sea of scattered desks, bat raised. His attack struck a flabby shoulder, and bounced with enough force to upset his balance. As his butt struck the floor and he gazed up at what he could only describe as giant tumors with four limbs, he realized their thick, doughy forms rendered blunt force trauma ineffectual. Moreover, when the monstrosities counter-attacked they charged with the unstoppable speed of a train, plowing indiscriminately through the sea of desks and sending the furniture flying.

In a blind panic, Mokuba scrambled across the room and dove across the desk at the front. One monster belly-flopped on the piece of furniture, while the other barreled right through the blackboard and into the other room. The desk splintered down the middle, dropping the first monster on its stomach. It kicked its stubby legs and pushed with its arms, rocking like an upset turtle. When Mokuba stabbed it a few times with a fragment of chalkboard, it didn't gush or leak or splash like he'd expected. It simply deflated into a heap of old, leathery skin.

The remaining beast did a lumbering one eighty and prepared to charge again. The young teenager wrenched a plank from the shattered desk and pointed it straight out in front of him, holding his ground. When the monster struck, the momentum propelled Mokuba backwards into a pile of desks. Air evacuated his lungs, taking with it any sound his moan of pain might have possessed. His hands throbbed with the sting of a dozen or so splinters left behind when the wood slid from his grasp. As Mokuba once more found himself fighting to breathe, his eyes found the cancerous mass slumped beside him. The wood protruding from its gut propped it up as it deflated in a wet, wheezing gasp.

Mokuba scrambled to his feet, barely noticing when he banged his shin on a desk leg, and checked on the small figure he'd come for in the first place. It was a little girl, no older than perhaps Seto had been when they arrived here. Her arms hugged her legs to her chest and her knees hid her face. She hadn't disappeared, and she hadn't attacked, but was she real? Mokuba couldn't be sure anymore. "Are… are you okay?" He asked.

"The light of the angels blinded me with fire," the figure gibbered. "Why won't they save me?"

It was then that Mokuba realized she had something shiny clutched in her dirt-streaked fist. He reached out, expecting her to vaporize under his fingertips, but his touch met solid, warm flesh on her forearm. "Save you from what?"

Her free hand gripped his wrist with boney fingers. "The angels. The angels in the quiet place."

For the first time, she moved as though to look at him. White marbles glowed at him from where her eyes should have been. They glimmered above pinched, hollow cheeks, sinking into her face as he watched, too stunned to move. She starved and dried and withered away right before his eyes, until a pile of dust and cloth remained, with the gold, rectangular object resting on top.

The quiet room, where children who erred in the eyes of the mistress went to repent. Those who had been there before begged for the belt. Some returned injured; scorched tongues, holes in their wrists and feet, ragged finger tips. Some disappeared all together. The mistress told stories of angels, punishing the wicked, reclaiming the innocent.

_Perhaps one day you will all behold the wonder of our creator's radiant acolytes._

Upon examination, Mokuba discovered the object was a lighter. He flicked it on and did a quick circuit of the room, looking for the bat he'd dropped. During the search, he discovered the writing on the chalkboard. Despite the chunk missing from the middle of the wall, he could still make out most of it. One line, over and over, in a child's scrawl.

"I will not soyl miself or the gifs the creeater has givin mee."

Mokuba had woken in the cold dark with his bladder screaming at him. He'd been afraid of the orphanage's drafty shadows, though—too afraid to make the trek to the bathroom. Eventually his bladder grew tired of his deliberation and simply made the decision for him. The next morning he'd been forced to confess his misdeed to the classroom and write those words on the board. It didn't matter to the teacher that he couldn't spell. The incident hadn't made him any friends, either, and the bullying hadn't stopped at name calling. A couple nights, he'd returned to the pathetic excuse for a mattress to find it drenched with water. Those nights, he shared a narrow pallet with Seto. His big brother protected him from some cruelties, but those were just the tip of an iceberg at Sunnyside.

A ripple of tittering laughter washed across the room behind him. Mokuba jumped and whipped around so quickly that the lighter went out. Indigo eyes roamed the jagged silhouettes of the decimated desks. Loose columns of dust churned restlessly in the thin beams of light that sliced through the boarded up windows. With a hissed whisper, something shifted abruptly in the palpable air behind him. Mokuba shot a look over his shoulder at the jagged wound in the wall.

The angels were still here, weren't they? Intangible, vengeful shapes in his peripheral vision, exactly as they appeared to him the night he'd wet his bed. He couldn't look right at them. The angels wouldn't allow it. They watched from the edges of his perception-a tingling stiffness in his joints that coagulated into a ball of nausea in the pit of his stomach.

Mokuba stamped his foot, resurrecting another puff of dormant dust. "No. No, there weren't any angels," he explained to the misty sentience surrounding him. "They were that woman, and her son, and the- the hallucinations of starving children. Maybe that pack of bullies that called themselves the Followers, but- but _no angels._"

Of course the world gave no answer. It didn't matter. Even if they were a figment of his imagination in the real world, that didn't mean they couldn't exist here. It didn't mean the jury of robed figures wasn't behind him, judging him and weighing his fate. It didn't mean they couldn't hurt him.

Gritting his teeth, twitching a bit as he resisted the static tingle of goose bumps swarming his flesh, the boy forced himself to calmly retreat to the hallway. With the lighter now at his disposal, he was able to locate the head mistress' office.

He pressed his nose to the window and searched the room for movement. It proved a futile precaution. No matter how fiercely the two inch flame flared on its perch, it simply wasn't enough to pierce the inky pitch beyond the door. Mokuba tucked the bat between his knees and tried the handle. The door opened a few inches and then jammed. After fruitlessly ramming it with his shoulder a few times, Mokuba wedged the bat into the gap and levered it open. The hinges squealed and coughed powdery rust.

At first glance, the old office was unremarkable. A dust blizzard-stirred by the slamming door-choked the damp air. Cobwebs festooned the corners of the room like ancient strings of tinsel. Insidious, blotchy patterns of black mold sprawled across the cheap rug. The desk held the most outdated paper-weight of a computer he'd seen in his life-time.

Mokuba took a few cautious steps forward, swinging the lighter gently side to side. A ratty curtain hung across a closet behind the desk. Keeping the piece of furniture between him and any imagined assailants, Mokuba jabbed at the gray cloth with the tip of the bat. The swaying fabric kicked up more dust and spores, but nothing else moved. Without moving any closer, the boy used the end of the bat to sweep the curtain wide open.

An eyeless face stared at him from the shadows.

The boy raised the bat and was halfway through a swing before he realized the face was only part of a horrific bust protruding from the wall. Below it on a small table, the melted nubs of candles surrounded a gruesome crucifixion of a child rendered in rough wood. The wet, red liquid trickling from the punctures in the wrists and feet looked disturbingly real. As Mokuba's gaze wandered to the bust once more, the lighter picked out words scrawled across the wall in the same red liquid.

'That which can see you can find you. That which can find you will kill you. Let sleeping angels lie.'

Mokuba stared into the bust's hollow eyes. Dark stains streaked its cheeks and chin like tears and drool. Was it sleeping? Could it see him? Were the angels in the corners right now, watching him in the glow of the tiny fire? He wrinkled his nose and scuttled away from it, shutting the curtain tightly.

Moving in a slow circle, he finally found the fuse box. Opening it was easy. The switches inside, however, were not nearly as straightforward as he'd hoped. They were divided five columns with varying amounts of switches in each. The first column had four switches labeled o, r, u, and y, respectively. The rest were "behorrt," "illw," "dei," and "eehr." At first he thought the letters next to each switch were abbreviations for different sections of the building. He soon realized he couldn't come up with any room names to match most of the letters, however, and it still didn't explain the letters that repeated.

"Dei" looked like it might be a foreign language, along with "behorrt" if he stretched his imagination, but that didn't account for the others.

"Illw" could be "will," with the letters scrambled into alphabetical order…

After that, most of the message fell into place quickly. The words were short and simple, really, and Mokuba managed to put together 'your behorrt will die here' without much more thought. "Betroh…" Mokuba whispered. "Bort her… brother…"

'Your brother will die here.'

The boy gasped. It couldn't mean Seto. Seto wasn't here. Was he? Maybe the entity that gave the town breath was toying with him again. Mokuba had been all over the map. If Seto were here, then Mokuba would have found him by now, or at least some sign of his passing. Maybe some dead monsters… Unless the mists had separated them on purpose… The town could make Mokuba see whatever it wanted, so why couldn't it hide whatever it wanted as well?

He stumbled backwards onto the corner of the desk and half rested there. He pressed the back of his hand to his mouth, staring at the floor. As he let the implications of Seto's whereabouts sink in, he began to realize it wasn't such a terrible thing yet. The future tense meant his big brother was still alive and would continue on that way for at least a little while. Seto was survivor, more-so than anyone—even Mokuba—really knew. All Mokuba needed to do was finish this pit stop on the tour of his childhood and keep searching. 'Here' might even mean this very building.

And if it turned out the town was teasing him once more, then it wouldn't matter. That would only matter if he allowed his worry to distract him from his goal.

_One problem at a time, then,_ he thought. _Now that I know the words, what do I do?_

He tried flipping the switches of 'oruy' in the order of the correct spelling. The panel sparked, but he heard power humming to life somewhere below him. With more confidence, he flipped some more switches. By the time he completed the fourth set of switches, he could see light filtering into the hall from somewhere upstairs.

A very light sigh breathed through the room. Mokuba raised the bat and whipped around. For several minutes, the obliviously cheerful bobbing and swaying of the flame in his finger tips remained the only movement in the room. The light couldn't penetrate the shadows beyond the desk or the door way. The sound could have originated anywhere. There was a particularly suspicious pack of shadows just down the hall, barely out of sight behind the doorframe. Of course, there was also the curtained off area with the strange alter. Mokuba had glossed over his exploration of that area as quickly as possible. Something could still be hiding in there, in the dark. If only he could _see_ what he was up against…

With one eye on the room and one eye on the fuse box, he flipped the last few switches. A naked fluorescent bulb stuttered in its dilapidated fixture. Mokuba didn't see anyone else in the room with him. The hallway remained empty and still as well. Reluctantly dismissing the earlier sound as the phantom of a paranoid imagination, he pocketed the lighter.

Something crashed behind the curtain and the candles rolled across the floor. Mokuba's head snapped up. A distinct groan came from the same direction and the dusty fabric bulged outward. The boy sidled to the open door as clawed hands gripped the corners on either side of the alcove and pulled. A large, almond-shaped eye peered through a hole in the curtain. A single point of white hot light burned deep in the void of the eye socket. When it focused on him, it flared even brighter, if that were possible.

With an abrupt heave, the clawed hands and long arms propelled the angel through the tattered remains of the curtain. Fully separated from the wall, the entity alit atop the desk.

_The angels weep for the stray children_. The mistress's voice again.

Black drool gushed around a lolling tongue set in a cavernous mouth. More of the black liquid streamed from its eyes. A halo of white and blue fire danced in place of its hair.

_One day, they will return for them._

A head like an upside-down egg perched at the end of a swan-like neck. A vaguely feminine torso hung in the center of four spider-leg-long limbs. Her legs bent back at the knee in a manner akin to a grasshopper or cricket.

_One day, they will correct them._

The angel leaped. Mokuba swung the bat. The weapon clanged against the dark, unyielding marble composing the creature's flesh and wrenched from his hand. Four sets of impossibly sharp claws dug into the door frame on either side of him, trapping him in a cage of the angel's limbs. The neck dipped toward him and the mouth yawned open, reveal a pulsing throat lined with vicious fangs.

Mokuba's hand scrambled at the surface of the door until it found the knob and twisted. The door swung open as he threw his weight backwards, sending him sprawling on his butt in the hallway. The bat was a loss. He'd find another weapon later. He rolled, got his feet under him, and fled for the stairs. Behind him, he heard the monster scramble up the wall and scuttled along the ceiling. Her head struck out on her long neck and her mouth snapped for the retreating boy. Mokuba ducked and felt her lips brush the hair at the top of his scalp.

Thundering up the steps, he lunged through the first open door he found and slammed it behind him. There was a loud thud as the angel failed to stop in time, followed by more as the unfazed creature tried to batter her way through the oak barrier. Mokuba scanned the sparsely furnished room. Sheets and futon mats promised to be poor choices for a barricade. Then he spotted the large, heavy dresser. Moving as quickly as he could, he heaved it in front of the door and retreated a few steps. The angel continued pounding, but Mokuba had successfully bought himself some time to reevaluate his situation.

Finding a new weapon was his first priority. Once more, however, the room had little to offer beyond sheets and mats. The pathetic nests lined both sides of the room on either side of a narrow path between them. Shelves just large enough for sleeping children carried more of the sleep mats up the wall wherever they found space. Pillows, true mattresses, bed frames and more were considered earthly excesses. This room embodied the Mistress's tenet of purity through ultimate simplicity.

He riffled through each bed in turn, hoping to find something useful hidden there. Black mold spores flew loose from the disturbed linens, but such a thing ranked very low on his list of concerns at the moment. The angel's banging and scratching reached new heights of determination. At one point, he was sure he heard the door crack.

Finally, as he flipped the ninth sleeping mat, he discovered something. A loose floorboard with a splintering sag in the middle revealed a hollow space under the floor. The secret hollow concealed a cracked, brown journal not much larger than an index card. The author had scribbled out most his name. There was a B, an N, maybe an F and an S. He'd also neglected to include a year in the dates, so Mokuba couldn't be sure if he ever knew him. Entries were written in hurried, concise sentences. Mokuba skimmed through it just in case something was hidden between the pages, like the brochure with the map and the key. He found a few pages about halfway through with crude blocks and lines that seemed to form some kind of map. These, he stopped to read.

"_Dec 27. Flu epidemic passed, but still sick. Leave me to rest while others do chores. Hurts to breathe sometimes. Sleep a lot."_

"_Dec 30. Fever up, still not allowed meds. Hate this place."_

"_Jan 1. Feel like dying. Pray like Mistress says, but the angels won't help. They never do."_

"_Jan 2. I'm feeling a bit better. My sister found meds, but I don't know how. Didn't ask."_

"_Jan 5. I faked sick to stay upstairs and look for an escape. Found crawlspace under the floor."_

"_Jan 6. I explored the crawlspace. There are a bunch of doors in the basement, but Mistress has the keys."_

"_Jan 7. They caught my sister sneaking in with the antibiotics! They sent her to the quiet room to repent for losing faith in the angels! I have to get those keys now!"_

"_Jan 13. They blinded her. Couldn't stop them. Fever returning. Chest rattles. Coughing. Throwing up. So tired. Please, god, just a little longer. We can escape. Please."_

"_Jan 15. Swallowed key got to keep it down. Get sister tonight first sleep. Tired barely move."_

The last entry was such large, wobbly chicken scratch that each sentence needed its own page. Dark flecks spattered the paper. Mokuba tried not to think about what that meant. Instead, he focused on what he now identified as the map of the crawlspace and the map of the basement.

The door bulged inward and the dresser slid a few inches. Shoving the notebook into the pocket with his lighter, Mokuba scrambled at the rotten floor until he created a large enough gap to wiggle inside. Using the lighter for illumination, he squirmed on his belly through the forest of cobwebs. In the corner of the room, a square chute descended into unknown depths. An old laundry receptacle, perhaps, torn out and boarded over long ago.

A deafening crash heralded the angel's entry. With nothing but a few inches of old two-by-fours separating him from the scraping claws, Mokuba struggled out of his puffy vest. He didn't much relish the idea of lodging in place halfway down the chute and it would tight fit already. Angling himself feet first, he closed his eyes and shimmied to the edge. His fingers gripped the lip of the shoot as he tested the incline. He might not shatter both ankles on landing.

_For Seto…_

His fingers released their hold and he plummeted down the bumpy incline. He resisted the urge to scream, lest the angel hear him and attempt to follow. For a sudden moment, he was suspended in the air. Then he belly flopped into the musty embrace of an old laundry cart. Shaking his head to dislodge a putrid undershirt, he glanced around the concrete room.

Clotheslines festooned with long forgotten garments ran the length of the room. Six vats of moldy water squatted nearby. Rusty washboards protruded from the swampy filth. A bare bulb sputtered pathetically in the center of the room. Mokuba clamored over the side of the laundry cart. While his back was turned, he heard a clattering of clicks and clacks somewhere in the forest of sheets and trousers. He whipped around, searching the flickering shadows and silhouettes for anything that might have moved, but the poor lighting played too many tricks on his eyes. Flattening himself against the wall, he edged toward the first clothesline aisle and peered around the corner. Empty.

He repeated this process for each aisle as he sidled around the perimeter until finally he found an iron door on the opposite side of the room. Mokuba eyed the eerily-still cloth walls lining the escape route. Anything could fly out of them at any moment, and he was still completely unarmed. After checking the aisle to his left and re-checking the aisle to his right, he ran for it. The door wasn't that far.

Something tall, thin, and hard as a rock dropped from the ceiling. Its chest connected with the back of his head and sent him sprawling. Two long legs and two long arms surround him. Talons dug into the concrete floor as easily as toes dig into sand. When Mokuba raised his head, he found himself nose to nose with the upside-down face of an angel. It shrieked at him as he scrambled backwards on his hands and knees. He rolled under a bed sheet and heard another scream as the angel followed.

The small boy dodged and ducked through any opening he could find while the monster barreled indiscriminately through every obstacle. It closed in on him. Mokuba saw the wall approaching rapidly, but if he slowed to turn one way or the other the angel could use that split second to grab him. He could barely maintain his lead as things currently stood. He'd only gotten a lead in the first place because the angel had been just slow enough in turning around.

A light went on in Mokuba's eyes. As he reached the wall, instead of turning one way or the other, he skidded a one-eighty, and kicked off the vertical surface. For a terrifying moment as he dove between the monsters arms and legs, he thought the gnashing teeth might still snag him on the way by, but the laundry tangled around the angel's neck flapped across its eyes at the last moment.

As Mokuba emerged behind it, the creature jumped and twisted in the air to face him. Unfortunately for the monster, it misjudged the distance between the clotheslines and only wound up in further entanglement. Mokuba reached the door and shot a glance over his shoulder. The Angel clawed at the cord and cloth. In a few more moments, it might be free. Mokuba couldn't have it following him. He'd already gotten lucky. Hoping it wouldn't cause the whole place to go up in flames—but still taking some pleasure in the thought of Sunnyside burning to the ground—he used the lighter to ignite a shirt and a skirt hanging nearby. The blaze spread with startling speed. Mokuba quickly darted through the door and slammed it behind him, ignoring the pained and frustrated screams of the monster behind him.

He found himself in a concrete hallway full of more iron doors. The first one was locked. The second took him into a stainless steel room. The tile floor sloped toward a drain in the center. Four rows of heavy, square doors line the opposite wall. Since this room lacked electrical lighting, Mokuba used the lighter to examine them more closely. They reminded him of morgue drawers, except that each had a cross etched into it. Each cross bore the name of the drawer's occupant. Mokuba was shocked to discover some of the names stirred a distant echo of recognition. Names of missing friends. Names of children that, according to the Mistress when asked by an outside party, had been adopted.

Sometimes, if asked by one of the children, she'd say they'd been spirited away by the angels. It was supposed to be comforting, as though living with the angels were some kind of reward. The concept had always unnerved Mokuba, however. It called to mind images of some unknown being climbing in through his window and snatching him from his bed, separating him and Seto forever.

As Mokuba skimmed the names, he came across one that stirred a more current memory. 'Francis, Brenton.' Mokuba checked the scribbles in the notebook. Even if he couldn't read it all, it was about the right length. So the boy had died here after all. If the blinded wraith Mokuba ran into in the classroom was the sister, then perhaps she had died here, too. There wasn't time to be sad for these strangers, though. Seto could still be in danger. If Brenton hadn't escaped, Mokuba only knew of two questions that mattered. Where was the key, and which door did it unlock?

Brenton wrote that he'd swallowed it. Had he died with it inside him?

Bracing himself, Mokuba opened the door. From here, he could only see a pair of bluish-white feet attached to bluish-white legs that disappeared into the darkness. The boy grasped the drawer handle and drew the naked body out into the light. Though he initially flinched at the thought of viewing Brenton's face, he needn't have worried. If not for the slate pallor of the skin, the twelve-year-old boy would have appeared to be merely asleep. Twelve… Not much older than Seto when he'd finally devised his and Mokuba's escape from the orphanage. What if Seto had failed as well?

_Better not dwell on that now,_ Mokuba thought, eyeing the taunt skin stretched across Brenton's ribs and stomach. _Does he still have the key? How do I find out?_

A quick circuit of the room revealed a table with several glass bottles and jars. As he turned to his left, an angel's face materialized at the edge of the lighter's dull glow. Mokuba instantly fled toward the door, but stopped after only a few feet. It hadn't pursued. On closer inspection he discovered another shrine. The crucifix had fallen on its back. Whereas the first angel statue had been rendered in a state of tormented contrition, this angel bust loomed hungrily over the crucified figure. A picture of wrath from above. The first angel hadn't come to life until he'd turned on the lights. He couldn't ascertain the origin of the second angel, but he might be safe from this one for the time being.

Mokuba tiptoed to the table with the glass bottles. Jagged chunks of glass littered the floor where one had fallen. Remaining as far from the shrine as possible, Mokuba stretched out his hand and felt carefully over the debris. His fingers finally closed around the bottle's neck. He jerked his arm back and scuttled away.

The angel didn't move.

With the broken bottle neck in one hand and the lighter in the other, the boy stood over the prone figure on the metal slab. Indigo eyes darted across the motionless abdomen as Mokuba chewed his lips. _What the hell am I doing?_ He asked himself. _Am I really going to… What if I'm wrong?_

His gaze returned to Brenton's serene face. In Mokuba's imagination, that face twisted into a contortion of agony and horror as the glass pierced his belly, shocked awake in the most terrifying of ways. At the same time, there was a staggering sense of emptiness about the thing. Flesh and blood though it may be, the body was as stiff, cold, and immobile as a department store mannequin.

Then there was the angel in the wall. How long could Mokuba hesitate before the mind in the mist saw fit to hurry him along by releasing that monster?

Closing his eyes, Mokuba thrust the glass downward. He felt the flesh give way under it, and that was all. There was no screaming and thrashing. Brenton remained as inert as he'd ever been. _It's just like an autopsy, _Mokuba reassured himself. _Perfectly normal people cut open dead bodies all the time. It's fine._ Feeling somewhat more relieved, Mokuba gritted his teeth and continued carving. The malnourished, decomposing youth had very little fat or muscle to work through, but it still took Mokuba several minutes to find the key. Cold organs squelched and slipped between his probing fingers. If not for the threat on his brother's life, he never would've gotten in past his knuckles. When he finally finished he wiped his shaking hands on his jeans, trying to put the whole disgusting business behind him and move on to the next task.

The brisk _clack clack clack_ of footsteps filled the hallway. "Break into my office, will you? Steal from me, will you?" A woman's voice berated.

Mokuba watched two shadows whisk past the door.

"Do you know what the angels do to little boys who lie and steal? Do you?" The woman continued.

"I'm not afraid of angels." Young Seto's voice.

Mokuba darted into the hallway, catching the door frame with one hand to propel himself around the corner. He recognized the mistress in her billowing black skirt and her long, immaculately kept braid. Her bony fingers clutched Seto's forearm in a brutal fist.

"You've made that abundantly clear, but you will learn to fear them. Once you witness their wrath firsthand-"

"The angels don't exist. I'm not a child. I know-"

The mistress jerked him around in front of her and slapped him hard. "I have had it with your smart mouth you- you blasphemous little… heathen!"

Seto barely flinched when she struck him. He stood rigid before her, glowering.

"You are _past_ praying for forgiveness! That's three days repentance in the quiet room!" She continued dragging him, heading for the heavy door at the end of the hall. "You best beg the angels to have mercy on your soul."

The day Mokuba ran away, Seto promised to slip the key into the mistress's desk before she figured out who took it. When Seto reappeared three days later, he'd concocted some excuse to assuage Mokuba's guilty conscience, but doubt had gnawed into Mokuba's subconscious and made a nest.

_Keep playing, Mokuba. I'll worry about the bad things. I'm used to it. You just keep playing and don't ever look back._

"No…" Mokuba took off after them. "No, it was me! Let him go!"

Of course the memory shadows couldn't hear him. They continued right on through the final door, fading into vapor and melting through the metal surface.

"Wait!" Mokuba yanked on the door frantically before remembering the key. Fumbling the slippery bit of metal out of his pocket, he jabbed at the lock. It took a few tries before the key slid home. Stairs spiraled haphazardly into the candlelight beyond the threshold. Without hesitation, the boy took off after the retreating shadows. They remained just out of sight around the corner no matter how fast he moved, but he didn't falter.

Since appearing in this hellhole, Mokuba had given up on wondering why he was here. The reason the mind in the mist had decided to torment him so endlessly had ceased to matter once surviving became his top priority. Now it chose to reveal its hand. Mokuba had to save his big brother, because Seto gave himself up to save his little brother, and Mokuba couldn't walk away again. Again because even Seto hadn't been able to hide everything… Again because of the lost memory of something Mokuba wasn't supposed to see… Because of a mansion door left open an inch too far… because…

The staircase ended at a glass wall. There was barely enough light to see past it. Cupping his hands around his face, Mokuba pressed his nose against the glass and squinted into the gloom. A shaft of gray light cast dim highlights across a young man bound to a large, wooden cross. Glazed, blue eyes watched the ground without seeing it.

"S-seto? Is that- Is it really you?"

Seto slowly raised his head and looked right at his little brother. The dark circles under his eyes stood in stark contrast to his sallow skin. His lips were cracked white and red from dehydration.

"Hang on. I'm going to get you out of there." Mokuba stepped back and felt over the glass wall, searching for a crack that might lead him to a door.

Seto opened his mouth, emitting a dry croak. Mokuba looked up. As Seto's sticky tongue darted ineffectually across his lips in preparation to speak again, a dozen or so pinpoints of white light ignited behind him.

Mokuba stared as the first angel's face materialized out of the darkness behind the cross, followed by a second, a third… The sixth and final angel climbed up the back of the cross, elbows and knees jutting out at awkward angles as it perched on the top. "Seto!" Mokuba slammed his fists on the glass.

Seto never broke eye contact with his little brother. He stared straight ahead, eyes full of stoic determination. The angels, however, barely spared Mokuba a glance, closing in on their helpless victim until Seto was completely obscured from view.

"Leave him alone! Do you hear me? Leave him alone!" Mokuba punched and kicked the glass as hard as he could. Bruises blossomed across his knuckles, but he barely felt it. The glass cracked. His knuckles cracked too. The jagged web spread from the bloody fist prints until it finally gave way. Mokuba tumbled forward in a twinkling shower of glass shards. Cold points that could have been glass, or angel talons, or some combination of both etched hot lines of pain into his chest, back, and arms. Their stony bodies grated against his skin, threatening to crush him in their frenzy, but he forced his way through. His wild eyes searched frantically for the shaft of light he knew hid just beyond the wall of writhing, black bodies; for the cross imprisoning his brother.

Dank air wrapped around Mokuba's questing hands as they erupted into a void. After a few more steps freed the rest of his body he could almost breathe again, if nearly choking on the stagnant humidity counted as breathing. Clouds of steam billowed from the swollen joints of sweating pipes and valves. The oppressive heat and lack of fresh air in the brick tunnel combined into an environment even more insufferable than the foggy streets. The red light emanating from the ceiling even managed to make Mokuba miss the pre-rain gray from what he presumed was now the world above him.

At least he'd escaped Sunnyside. But what about Seto? The scene with the cross must have been another illusion. Mokuba shook his head. This place… It was hell on his perception of reality.

Mokuba's feet moved as if on their own, carrying him deeper into the tunnel. Forward momentum. Walking without ceasing or thinking or feeling. It was all he had.


End file.
